In this month’s issue, we offer Terry Hershey’s article “The Spirituality of Standing Still.” In it, he writes about how important it is to find a place to go when life is topsy-turvy. “More than ever,” he writes, “we need sustenance, places of sanity and restoration. What we’ve been through—or are going through—we need permission to give ourselves the gift of stillness and sanctuary.”

That’s good advice. But in the noise of 21st-century life, how many of us put it into practice?

If you’re reading these words, you are at least open to a restorative moment of calm. And that’s really our goal. While features and columns within this issue are intended to inform, ultimately, the staff of St. Anthony Messenger and Franciscan Media wants you to feel OK. Even when life is upside down—by the economy, political infighting, a global pandemic—if you are reading this magazine, you’re not alone. We are with you on this journey. And that is something to celebrate.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

When their parents brought them to the United States as children, they were too young to have a say in the matter. Now, as adults, they are advocating for the right to remain in the only country they’ve ever known.

Maria Vizcaino speaks like any other 26-year-old college graduate from the Atlanta suburbs. She carries a slight Southern accent, and her relatively fair complexion causes people to be surprised when they discover she is among the estimated 640,000 people who rely on DACA for her life in the United States.

“They expect a stereotypical Mexican,” Maria says.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) remains a mouthful of bureaucratese sometimes hard to follow for the uninitiated. Immigration advocates often use the term “Dreamers” to describe those, like Vizcaino, who came to the United States with their families as children illegally and now seek better lives. Vizcaino came here from Mexico when she was only 4 years old.

To obtain DACA status, immigrants must pay a fee of nearly $500, pass through an application process, meet all eligibility requirements, and have no felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records. They are then eligible for work permits. But DACA does not offer a path to citizenship. Only legislation passed by Congress could do that, and that doesn’t look likely in the current divisive political climate surrounding immigration issues.

Still, DACA offers hope for Dreamers. For Vizcaino, it provides an entry into American life, a pathway to success. “It’s been the biggest relief for me,” she says. Without it, she would be trapped in a nowhere land of no citizenship and no opportunities beyond a lifetime in the immigrant shadows.

Dreaming of Closure

The Dreamers emerged after President Barack Obama implemented DACA by executive action in 2012. That decision came after years of lobbying by immigrant activists. Obama argued that DACA assured participation in American life among those who arrived here as children, like Vizcaino, far too young to be held responsible for violating the law.

Vizcaino is a Dreamer who has taken advantage of the opportunities provided with DACA. A member of St. Philip Benizi Church in Jonesboro, Georgia, she graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in political science. She works as a legal assistant and plans to attend graduate school, advancing her own role as a young political activist.

Still, nothing is guaranteed with DACA. Vizcaino, like the other Dreamers, is obliged to avoid run-ins with the police and pay fees every other year to receive a stamp of approval to continue working. The program, while relatively uncontroversial—even President Donald Trump, not known as a champion of immigrants, spoke favorably about the Dreamers—is intractably swept up in the wider political arguments around immigration.

Congress has never approved it, and it hangs by a thread over the lives of its recipients. The directive has been regularly challenged in court, bouncing between rulings that have upheld it and others that threaten its very existence.

“It’s the fear of all of us that the courts could take it all away,” says Vizcaino, who has followed the ups and downs of DACA since emerging as an immigration rights activist during high school. Her fears were partially realized in July 2021, when the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that DACA was unlawful. However, as the case continues to be argued in the courts, current DACA recipients are allowed to continue in the program.

Speaking Out

José Cabrera, former director of education and advocacy for the Ignatian Solidarity Network, a Cleveland-based Jesuit social justice group, speaks frequently about immigration issues and his own former DACA status. Born in Mexico, he came to the United States at age 4 and settled with his family in Cincinnati. His father worked in construction; his mother cleaned houses and, in an inspiration for her son, worked as an immigration rights activist.

A leader in YES—Youth Educating Society—Cabrera has advocated for immigrant rights since his high school days and college years at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He speaks as an impassioned advocate for others, describing how DACA played an essential part in his story.

When Cabrera first came to the United States, his family stayed at an uncle’s home in North Carolina. He learned early about his limited rights in the country because he and his family entered illegally. “You have to understand. You have no rights here. You can’t talk to the police, or else you could be separated from your mother,” his uncle told him.

_{Sandra Oñate, a Dreamer born in Mexico, helps lead a rally in support of immigration reform in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2017.}

DACA allowed him to continue his education. Eventually, Cabrera was able to emerge from the shadows and is now a legal US resident.

He says he felt the support of the community nurtured via his Jesuit education and the immigrant community that grew around the former St. Charles Borromeo Church in Cincinnati. Cabrera says the Church has been a vital source of support and advocacy for Dreamers. Still, while the institutional Church is on board, not all in-the-pew Catholics are as supportive, shown by the approval among some Catholic communities for the anti-immigrant rhetoric of former President Trump.

But for Cabrera, advocating for DACA is a faith imperative. “You should welcome your neighbor; you should welcome your fellow Catholics,” he says. “Welcoming the immigrant is very much a part of the Catholic Church.”

Sandra Oñate, 24, is another DACA Dreamer born in Mexico. She came to the United States with her family at 5, settled in Sharonville, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, and graduated with a degree in biology from Northern Kentucky University.

She became aware of her undocumented status while still in grade school. When her parents left for work, and she stayed at home with her sister, they were told to turn the lights out and to be careful talking to the police.

They found community at the former St. Charles Borromeo Church in Cincinnati with its large Latino presence. Oñate became an activist for DACA young people such as herself while still in high school. “I learned that my story was different. I learned how to tell my story,” she says. Part of that story is that she came to the United States with a degenerative eye condition, which, with the help of surgeries, she is now overcoming.

Every two years, she reapplies for DACA status, filling out the government paperwork, hoping that someday the program will become law.

The Catholic Response

While the country remains divided over DACA, the Catholic Church has adamantly supported its provisions and worked to make the program permanent via congressional action.

Even in a time when the Church itself can seem as divided as the nation at large, no Catholic authority has protested DACA provisions. Support transcends ideological differences among bishops. Pope Francis, who rarely comments on US politics, has shown that the Church stands with immigrants.

The bishops are following his lead. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) argues that DACA should be enshrined into law by congressional action. Meanwhile, Church activists fight legal challenges to a program supported by the relatively flimsy thread of executive directive. President Joe Biden followed Obama in support of DACA and has been joined by Democrats in Congress. But action has stalled in the Senate.

Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville-Rodriguez, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, noted the bishops’ support for DACA in a statement after a federal court ruling in Texas in June 2021. “We know that DACA was never meant to be a permanent solution for Dreamers,” he said. “This ruling is simply the most recent development in a long list of events warranting action by Congress. The Senate currently has multiple bills before it that would grant permanent relief to Dreamers, including the American Dream and Promise Act passed by the House of Representatives in March [2021].”

The bishop noted the contribution of Dreamers to the US economy, their service in the military, and how many were frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. “But they are prevented from becoming full members of our society,” he said. “All Dreamers, not just those receiving DACA, deserve the opportunity to achieve their God-given potential in the only country most of them have ever known. This is not only a matter of human dignity but also family unity, considering the 250,000 US citizen children with Dreamers as parents.”

The bishop quoted Pope Francis: “Immigrants, if they are helped to integrate, are a blessing, a source of enrichment, and new gift that encourages a society to grow.”

_{In 2017, José Cabrera, then a student at Xavier University in Cincinnati, shares his immigration story at the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice in Washington, DC. The annual gathering commemorates the 1989 martyrdom of six Jesuits and their companions in El Salvador.}

Bishop Mark Seitz of the border Diocese of El Paso, Texas, is among those who have been most assertive in support of an immigrant Church that has long been established near the US-Mexico border. He expressed anger after the Trump administration threatened to end DACA: “Christians are fundamentally loving, forgiving people, just as Jesus lived and is, but there are some things that angered Jesus, and they should anger us as well. Some things should anger us enough to have the courage to speak out to people against their politically motivated assaults on the innocents.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco noted: “When immigrants are no longer seen as merely a danger to others or threats to the local community but instead as persons, our feelings of animosity can morph into feelings of love and concern. As Catholics, we are called not only to know the stranger through the stranger’s stories but to welcome the stranger as Christ himself, for Christ reveals himself to us through them: I was . . . a stranger and you welcomed me’ (Mt 25:35).”

Echoing Pope Francis, the San Francisco archbishop argued that “an essential component of our role in welcoming the stranger is to place special attention on integration—uplifting the newcomer to help him or her reach full and dignified participation in our Church and society.”

The stance of the bishops is not surprising. They are acting in the long tradition of a Church built on immigrants in this country throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Back in 1988, the bishops established the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), an advocacy and legal support service program for immigrants. It was a time of relative harmony and bipartisanship around immigration concerns. In 1986, a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, with the support of Democrats in Congress, offered a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. CLINIC, based in Washington, DC, was established to assist immigrants to process the necessary paperwork to prove that they had been long-established residents.

That almost-forgotten amnesty is now ancient history. The comity of bipartisanship around immigration issues is now a relic. Many Republican politicians express regret for Reagan’s amnesty, arguing that it failed to be accompanied by stricter border controls.

Even amid the partisan wrangling, there is hope that a DACA consensus could emerge. DACA recipients now are a central part of American life. While the public imagination focuses on the young, many are approaching middle age and have established careers, businesses, and families.

They are also essential to the country, argues Anna Marie Gallagher, executive director of CLINIC. Dreamers are all over the United States and are an integral part of communities beyond the immigrant hotbeds of large cities on the coasts or in the US-Mexico border region. “They are all American, for all intents and purposes, except for their place of birth,” she says.

Conflicting Viewpoints

Much of the ongoing debate over immigration involves seemingly intractable conflicts. Issues include: Should those who came here illegally be allowed the rights of US citizens? Will a pathway to citizenship applied to all undocumented immigrants only encourage more to crowd the borders? Is granting rights to Dreamers a reward for illegal behavior?

But DACA is different, says Gallagher. No one should argue that children should be punished for the decisions of their parents now that they are adults. Political factions in Congress, she says, should look to enshrine DACA into legislation because “this is something they can and should come together on.”

_{(Left) Outside the US Capitol in 2018, Sisters of Mercy and others participate in the Catholic Day of Action with Dreamers to press Congress to protect DACA recipients. This demonstration of solidarity brought together over 200 priests, women religious, and laypeople, some of whom were arrested for civil disobedience. (Right) Anna Marie Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), speaks during a session of the US bishops’ general assembly in 2021.}

Amy Haer, director of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, says that many of the Dreamers are no longer young: “Some of these people have had this status for nine years. They have built families and careers in the United States.”

She sometimes hears complaints that the Dreamers should come to the United States the way former immigrants did, through a legal portal. But Haer, who traces her own family’s lineage in the United States to the 17th century, notes that the times have changed. “They will say that my people came the right way. But the right way was a lot easier when your people came,” she says, noting the growth of restrictive immigration laws as the gates narrowed in the early 20th century.

Planting a Seed

Sandra Oñate will, along with many other young Dreamers, continue to speak out, arguing the case that massive deportations of those who have been here for decades and did not consciously violate the law are unrealistic, besides violating the Christian principle of welcoming the stranger articulated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.

In reality, many of the Dreamers are not strangers. They are, argue immigration advocates and DACA recipients, as American as anyone else. Many don’t speak the language of their home countries and are often culturally disconnected from their countries of origin. They have largely become a part of life in the large urban centers on the coasts, as well as the suburbs of places such as Cincinnati and Atlanta, and small towns across the South and the Midwest.

Successfully describing themselves as Dreamers—conjuring up an image of American achievement—those in the movement are now promoting that picture in the hope that politicians can be persuaded that what is good for the Dreamers is also good for the nation. The struggle is sure to continue.

“At the end of the day,” says Oñate, “my option is to share my experience and to plant a seed.”

Back and Forth: A DACA Time Line

2001: With bipartisan sponsorship from Senators Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act is proposed; it is repeatedly rejected by Congress.

JUNE 2012: President Barack Obama establishes the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

AUGUST 2012: US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), under the Department of Homeland Security, begins accepting DACA applications.

SEPTEMBER 2017: President Donald Trump announces that DACA will be phased out.

JUNE 2020: The Supreme Court rules that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA and sends the case back to Homeland Security; meanwhile, the DACA program remains in place.

JANUARY 2021: President Joe Biden directs the secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the attorney general, to maintain and strengthen DACA.

JULY 2021: A Texas federal judge rules DACA illegal and blocks new applicants. Those currently in the program may keep their status during the appeal.

_{(Sources: Law Library, Howard University; Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, Ross-Blakley Law Library)}

Check out our blog, Helping Dreamers, to learn more.

The Catholic Project believes clergy and laity can work together to heal a US Church humiliated by the sex abuse scandals.

There is a crisis and a breach of trust in the Catholic Church because of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic University of America and its Catholic Project are working to confront this through a collaboration between the clergy and laity.

“To restore that trust, the Church needs the help of the lay faithful,” retired Catholic University President John Garvey said in a video for the Project. He pointed out that Catholic University “is where laity and clergy come together in a spirit of mutual respect and charity to address the most challenging issues of our times.”

It was a natural fit for the university to facilitate that collaboration.

A Summer of Scandal

During the summer of 2018, the Church was rocked by scandals involving clergy sex abuse and cover-ups—including the news about then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s misconduct and the Pennsylvania Attorney General Grand Jury Report.

The seed for the Catholic Project was planted that fall with a “Healing of the Breach of Trust” event at the university. The first in a four-part series, it focused on the role of media in investigating and reporting on the clergy sex abuse crisis. The panel included journalists from Catholic and secular media.

Given that Catholic University was founded by the US Catholic bishops and is a national Catholic institution, it made sense for the university to respond to the crisis, says Stephen P. White, executive director.

“President John Garvey thought that being in Washington, DC, and given the fact that Catholic University is the bishops’ university—and . . . the way that the credibility of the bishops had been so damaged—that the bishops would normally be the ones to lead the Church out of a moment like that,” White said.

White joined the Project in February 2019 as it took root, the name was announced, and it went public.

“At first, it was a bit like building an airplane midflight because we had so many ideas, there [was] so much urgency, [and] the news stories were breaking so fast. There was a pretty steep learning curve,” he says.

_{(Left) John H. Garvey lent his support to the Catholic Project during his tenure as president of the Catholic University of America. He retired in June 2022 after 10 years at the helm. (Right) Stephen P. White, executive director of the Catholic Project, says collaboration between laity and clergy can help heal the Church.}

Several academic conferences that spring focused on the root causes of the crisis, the role of the laity in responding to it, and principles for effective lay action. A May 2019 event brought together bishops, their staff, abuse survivors, the university, the community, and others from the Church for a day of conversation and dialogue.

“We refined our strategic vision, in a sense, from the beginning. We always wanted to be a project that was collaborative—this can’t be laity against the clergy, and it can’t be simply deferred to the clergy. The situation in the Church required that everybody do their part to try and help the Church in this moment,” White recalls.

The university made a conscious decision that, even though the bishops were under scrutiny and criticism, “any job worth doing to help the Church in this moment would require the acknowledgment that we need our bishops,” he says.

“And even if there’s an amount of blame for the situation in the Church, they are our shepherds, we need them, and we need to help them to be more effective shepherds,” he says. “That’s part of the mission of the laity.”

Catholic University is committed to supporting the bishops through educational initiatives, research, and events and media, White says.

Protecting Children

The Project’s most prominent education effort is a certificate in child protection and safe environments offered through the university’s National Catholic School of Social Service.

“The idea is to train mostly working professionals, to give them the tools they need to be able to understand how to build safe environments for children,” White says. Graduates will be well qualified to serve as diocesan victim assistance coordinators.

An online version to make the training available as widely as possible is being finalized. The program will be helpful to Catholics, “but also to Baptists and Boy Scouts and everyone else,” he says.

“We’ve been at this for a depressingly long time now, and it’s not like we haven’t made any progress,” he says. “The Church has learned some very important lessons about how to do a better job of listening to and taking care of survivors and victims of abuse.”

White says they want to help people learn from the mistakes the Church has made “and the things the Church really has gotten right.”

A Clear-Eyed Look at the Crisis

As a research institution, Catholic University is well positioned to take a closer look at the roots and ramifications of the crisis. Still in the early stages, one such look is at the state of the episcopate in the United States and how the abuse crisis and the Church’s response have affected trust levels between priests and bishops.

“There’s a reason we have all kinds of protocols in the Church for what happens when an allegation comes in. But at the same time, if it has altered the relationship between priests and bishops to be less a father-son relationship or a fraternal relationship and turn it more into a human resources kind of relationship, that’s not necessarily a good thing,” White says.

Why does a healthy culture of trust flourish in some places and not others, and what can be done to bring that about? “We want to take the unique faculties and mix of experts that we have here at the university and make them available not just to the academic community, but also to the wider community, Catholic and non-Catholic,” he says.

_{Abuse survivors Teresa Pitt Green and Luis Torres Jr. (center) pose with John Garvey, former president of the Catholic University (back left), and several bishops at a May 2019 dialogue arranged by the Catholic Project.}

During the global coronavirus pandemic, the Project offered online events and a podcast called Crisis: Clergy Abuse in the Catholic Church (CatholicProject.Catholic.edu/Podcast). The documentary-style podcast, released in fall 2020 and downloaded more than 200,000 times, was hosted by Karna Lozoya, vice president for university communications. The Atlantic named it one of the top 50 podcasts of 2020, calling it “a compelling listen despite the grim material.”

“It’s been [one] of the most publicly facing things that we’ve done,” White says. “The approach was just right, meaning not looking away from the sins and crimes of the Church and the clergy, but also not just simply dwelling on that. So, striking the right balance between taking a clear look at what has been done, but also taking a sincere and honest look at what can be done from here on out.”

A monthly newsletter highlights the stories of victim assistance coordinators—the diocesan position established in the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that responds to claims by victim-survivors.

White says the victim assistance coordinators are on the front lines “helping people who are terribly vulnerable who are reaching out to the Church. It’s a remarkable thing when someone who’s been harmed that way comes to the Church to ask for assistance.” When people ask what the Catholic Church is doing about the abuse crisis—a legitimate question, he says—the diocesan ministries established to respond not only to claims, but also to the people who have been hurt, are “not often highlighted.”

Fostering Dialogue

In the fall of 2019, White wanted to look at how priests were doing after the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report and the McCarrick revelations. “Shepherds to a Wounded Flock: How Our Priests See the Crisis” brought in four priests to talk about the abuse crisis, how it affects their ministry, and the future of the Church in the United States.

White says because there was so much focus on bishops—and what they did or didn’t do—and the anger and outrage among the laity, “good priests suffered this blow twice. They were outraged and disgusted as Catholics, but they also bore a lot of the shame of what their brother priests had done . . . even if they weren’t personally responsible.”

In May 2019, the Project arranged a dialogue between bishops and abuse survivors. “It was a really remarkable thing,” says White. “These are abuse survivors who have decided that they have something that they can offer to the Church to help the Church. This wasn’t antagonistic in any way.

“People who have suffered so horribly at the hands of clergy would come to the Church and say: ‘We love the Church. There are things that we know—that we’ve learned the very hard way—that we can teach you so that you do a better job than your predecessors did.'”

The Project collaborated with Spirit Fire (SpiritFireLive.org), a survivors ministry, to get everyone in the same room. That convening role, where the university provides a forum for people to come together and learn, is a big part of its work, White says.

He dialogues with survivors, those “who have suffered the most from this crisis,” and marvels at the amount of hope that comes from their stories. “To hear survivors say, ‘I haven’t lost hope; you shouldn’t either,’ can be a real powerful message.”

Facing the Future

In addition to the abuse crisis, the Project focuses on related issues, including the financial fallout.

The Project organized a closed gathering for bishops and their staff going through or considering bankruptcies. “This is a pastoral challenge that we wanted to help bishops to tackle,” White says.

They teamed with Marie T. Riley, a bankruptcy lawyer at Penn State, who researched publicly available legal documents related to bankruptcies in dioceses, religious orders, and states. She allowed the Project to publish her research.

_{Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops when this photo was taken, answers questions during a conference on “Healing the Breach of Trust” at the Catholic University of America in 2018.}

Brian Winger, an attorney who helped the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis when it filed for Chapter 11 protection in January 2015, joined in as well as Archbishop Bernard Hebda, who “dealt with the cleanup and the conclusion of that process,” White says.

The meeting provided not only practical advice on decision-making, who needs to be consulted, the legal and financial aspects, but also pastoral advice. “Bishops want to know how this is going to affect their flock, their ministries, and the relationship between the bishop and the priests and the laity,” says White.

A Moment of Grace

It’s been 20 years since the charter and the accompanying norms were implemented.

White believes the charter “has largely worked, in the sense that Catholic institutions are among the safest places for children these days. I think the incidence of abuse has really fallen off. There are as strong protection and reporting protocols in the Catholic Church as there are anywhere.

“What hasn’t happened yet is a restoration of confidence in the Church as an institution. I don’t mean that in a theological sense and certainly not in the political sense. But the mission of the Church is to evangelize and bring people close to Christ. If the Church can say, ‘Look, we’re not going to harm your children,’ that’s great. That’s the starting point. But that itself isn’t enough to get people to fall in love with Jesus,” White says.

“What the Church has to still do—and this isn’t something that the charter ever could really fix—is find a way to regain confidence, to go out and evangelize. And perhaps the best thing now is to see how evangelization from a posture of weakness and vulnerability can be efficacious,” he says.

Safe environment practices and other measures from the Vatican—including “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”), Pope Francis’ May 2019 motu proprio that holds bishops and religious superiors accountable—”just [gets] us back to the starting point, which is how does the Church save souls, and how do we do that with this stain on the Church?” White says.

“That is going to be a challenge for a long time and something the Church has to face as a reality, but not also be daunted by it, not despair.

“If we let our own fallen, fallible, sinful souls get out of the way, and let the real truth of the Church shine through, that’s how the Gospel spreads,” he says. “If we take Providence seriously, the humiliation of the Catholic Church in this country can be—not necessarily will be—but can be a moment of grace.”

St. Francis encouraged all of us to see the humble goodness of God in the Eucharist, and to “pour out our hearts” to him in gratitude.

Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of Francis of Assisi, tells us that the saint often used to tell people: “If I should happen at the same time to come upon any saint coming from heaven and some little poor priest, I would first show honor to the priest, and hurry more quickly to kiss his hands. For I would say to the saint: ‘Hey, St. Lawrence, wait! His hands may handle the Word of Life and possess something more than human!'” Such was the love of St. Francis for the Eucharist.

In Jesus Christ, Francis saw the incredible generosity of a God who assumed our poor, fragile human nature out of love for us and all creation. It was this good God, who did not insist on his divine prerogatives, but readily “emptied himself” to join us in our poverty, who captured Francis’ heart. Just as he had great affection for the God who became flesh, so Francis had profound respect and love for the Eucharist, in which the Word of the Father continues to pour forth God’s goodness by “coming down” to us daily on the altar under the guise of bread and wine.

Francis’ writings are filled with exhortations and exclamations about the astounding humility of a God who does not hesitate to offer himself to us. For Francis, the Eucharist is the most striking and regular reminder that God truly is “the fullness of good.”

The Most Holy Body and Blood

In his writings, St. Francis never uses the word Eucharist to describe the sacrament. Instead, he refers most often to “the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Such a concrete, descriptive phrase is to be expected from a saint who tended to avoid abstract thinking and language. But in this case, it is especially important because by referring regularly to “the Body and Blood of the Lord,” Francis emphasizes that the sacrament is not a static “thing” but a dynamic person, who is present on the altar just as much as he was when he walked with his disciples in Galilee. As he tells us in his Testament, which he wrote at the end of his life, “I see nothing corporally of the most high Son of God except His most holy Body and Blood.”

When Francis gazed upon the sacrament, he did not see a symbol or a reminder of the crucified Lord, but Jesus himself, who “puts Himself into [the priest’s] hands and we touch Him and receive Him daily with our mouth.” Even to refer to it as “Eucharist,” correct as the term might be, was not enough to capture the reality of the living, breathing presence of the One who each day “comes down from the bosom of the Father upon the altar.”

In all of this, Francis does nothing more than express orthodox Catholic faith in the Real Presence, but his sense of this presence is characteristically lively, concrete, and even intimate. For Francis, his Lord and brother Jesus came to him personally whenever he received Communion. This is a reality that can only be grasped by the grace of the Spirit, which is love.

It is the work of the Spirit that allows us to believe that what we receive from the hands of the priest is truly the Lord himself, just as it is the Spirit who enables us to discern the word of the Father in Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, he says, let those who believe that Jesus truly is the Son of God also believe that the bread and wine we see with our “bodily eyes” are in fact “His most holy Body and Blood living and true.” There may be those who, for whatever reason, do not believe in this great gift, but Francis urges those who cannot discern the true presence with “spiritual eyes” to therefore refrain from receiving it, lest—as St. Paul himself said—they “eat and drink judgment on themselves” (1 Cor 11:29). The saint repeats this warning throughout his writings.

Francis also recognizes that our reception of the Eucharist cannot be isolated from a larger determination to live within the will of God by eradicating vice and sin, and “producing worthy fruits of penance,” by which he means loving God and neighbor in concrete ways. The whole reason that Jesus humbly presents himself in the Eucharist is to enable us not only to be reconciled to God, but also to continue to become more and more like him. One cannot receive the divine gift, so lovingly offered, without understanding why Jesus offers himself in the first place—and striving to live accordingly.

O Sublime Humility!

Most astounding to Francis was the way in which Jesus is present to us in the Eucharist. When the Word of the Father first came to us in the flesh, he did so in great humility and poverty. In fact, for Francis, the very act of becoming human reflected the humility of the all-powerful God. Although he is now glorified and seated at the right hand of the Father, Jesus comes to us in even more humility and poverty, not only under the guise of ordinary bread, but as food.

In a letter he wrote to all the friars, Francis breaks into rapturous praise of the humility of the One who came to serve and still comes to serve: “O wonderful loftiness and stupendous dignity! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! The Lord of the universe, God and Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under an ordinary piece of bread! Brothers, look at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before Him!”

O sublime humility! And what humble awesomeness! The Eucharist captures for Francis the central and most beautiful paradox about the character of God revealed in Christ.

The all-powerful, magnificent, all-sufficient, and splendid creator of the universe loves his creation so much that he does not hesitate to lower himself—even coming as a piece of bread to save us. This is what makes God so lovable and so supremely good, so magnificent and splendid for Francis. First the Incarnation and now the Eucharist remind us constantly that the goodness, love, and mercy of God lead God in Jesus to “give Himself totally” to us. Out of love for us, God holds nothing back, and this is the humility and the poverty of God. Only the most exalted and all-powerful God could be this free, this generous, this good.

Hold Back Nothing of Yourselves

In the same letter to all the friars, Francis exclaims that there is only one possible response to such divine generosity and humility: “Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him! Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally!”

All Christians bear the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, and so all Christians are called to be as much like him as possible. For St. Francis of Assisi, this means being as humbly generous with God as God has been with us. In the letter Francis wrote to the priests of the order, the saint makes the point a little differently: “Are we not moved by piety [that is, profound respect] . . . when the pious [profoundly respectful] Lord puts Himself into our hands and we touch and receive Him daily? Do we refuse to recognize that we must come into His hands?”

The Eucharist, as the humble offering by Jesus of his own body and blood to us, invites a reciprocal response. We are called to observe his humble generosity—he certainly doesn’t need to offer himself to us this way or any way—and to respond by being humbly generous toward him.

How, Francis says, can we receive the body and blood of the Lord, in which God holds back nothing of himself for our salvation, and not resolve to hold back nothing for God? How can we not show the creator of the universe the same loving respect he shows us in the Eucharist?

Honoring Christ in the Eucharist

In his letters and other writings, Francis frequently refers to the need to show great respect for the most holy body and blood of the Lord who gives himself completely to us. In the first place, anything that relates to the sacrifice of the Mass must be clean. In his letter to the Franciscan clergy, he urges those priests who are negligent in these matters to “consider how very dirty are the chalices, corporals, and altar-linens upon which His Body and Blood are sacrificed.”

He repeats this exhortation in his letter to those friars who are in charge of Franciscan houses (“custodians”), urging them to “humbly beg the clergy to revere above all else the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . They should hold as precious the chalices, corporals, appointments of the altar, and everything that pertains to the sacrifice.” And in his letter to all the friars of the order, he urges once again that all vessels and liturgical items, including the books that contain Christ’s holy words, be treated with the reverence due them.

In all of this, Francis is reflecting not only his own reverence for the body and blood of Christ, but also recent Church attempts to address what appears to have been a widespread laxity when it came to honoring the Eucharist.

The Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, had ordered all churches and church vessels be kept clean. This was followed up by papal letters urging the same. The same council also decreed that the Eucharist itself must be carefully handled and secured under lock in appropriate places. (This was in an age before churches had tabernacles on the altar.) Here, too, Francis reflects the urging of the popes when he instructs the custodians that, “if the most holy Body of the Lord is very poorly reserved in any place, let It be placed and locked up in a precious place according to the command of the Church.”

The casual attitude toward the Eucharist that Francis and the popes opposed may have stemmed from a general failure to understand or believe that Jesus Christ was truly present in the sacrament, that it was in fact “the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In several places, Francis comments on the fact that the Eucharist is frequently “received unworthily [by priests] and administered to others without discernment.” The lack of discernment he has in mind is a failure to recognize that what we receive from the altar is not the same as other foods. In one of his “Admonitions” to the friars, he insists that we must see “the sacrament sanctified by the words of the Lord upon the altar . . . according to the Spirit and the Divinity.”

Humble Gift, Humble God

Francis’ frequent statements about the Eucharist are, of course, marked by his characteristic emphasis on the profoundly generous humility of God, who is goodness itself. It was not enough for God to have mercy on us in our brokenness and sin. God could have done that “from a distance,” keeping the divine holiness and majesty far away from us and our tendency to be very unholy. But God is too good, too generous for that, and chose instead to embrace our broken human nature, quite literally, by becoming one of us in Jesus. This is not only an astounding act of love, but even more remarkably a humble one.

This “awesome and exalted humility and humble awesomeness” is—unbelievably!—extended to us every day, if we choose to accept it, in the form of bread and wine. Once again, the humble God does not choose to come to us any other way but the most simple, subtle, and unintimidating.

For St. Francis, there was only one way to respond to such generosity and goodness, and it was with praise, thanksgiving, and a desire to allow Jesus to transform us into his image and likeness.

God gives us everything we need to attain all of God’s gracious promises. Especially, he gives us himself in the body and blood of his son. In the words of St. Francis, “O how holy and how loving, gratifying, humbling, peace-giving, sweet, worthy of love, and above all things, desirable: to have such a Brother and such a Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,” who offered himself and still offers himself for us. The saint’s words prompt us to consider how we ought to respond to such a great gift, which is, after all, offered to us out of the infinite goodness of God’s humble heart.

Surely, the anti-abortion movement will continue in states that allow abortion to remain the law. But what comes next for the movement in states that, following the Supreme Court ruling, shut down access to abortions? In those situations, on what will the movement then focus its powerful voices?

For many, the pro-life movement is seen as one of protest. For years, millions have gathered for the March for Life in Washington, DC. Protesters also frequently gather outside women’s clinics across the country.

What some people do not often associate with the movement, though, is action on other issues women and the children they are encouraged to give birth to may face. In fact, some critics say the organization is more pro-birth than pro-life. Why are pro-life advocates not raising their voices and marching for the everyday issues and challenges these families likely will face, such as poverty, health care, education, housing, and a host of other things?

To say that the pro-life movement has ignored these issues is certainly not fair. There are many organizations that help mothers in need of support and assistance. Unfortunately, this work is all too often done in the background. It surely is not celebrated the way it should be for a movement with such a large backing. Nor does it seem to be the main focus of the cause.

Womb to Tomb

In the 1980s, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin spoke of the concept of a consistent ethic of life, which called for the care of people from the “womb to tomb.” It has often been referred to as the seamless garment.

The concept was introduced in the cardinal’s 1983 “Gannon Lecture” at Fordham University. During his speech, Cardinal Bernardin said that, while abortion is an important issue to address, it is only one of a host of pro-life issues that demand our attention.

“Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker,” he said.

He went on to state: “We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.”

In that same spirit, after the June ruling, Cardinal Blase Cupich—one of Cardinal Bernardin’s successors in the Archdiocese of Chicago—said, “We welcome this important ruling and the opportunity it creates for a national conversation on protecting human life in the womb and promoting human dignity at all stages of life.”

A Call to Action

At no point in his many discussions on the consistent ethic of life did Cardinal Bernardin back down from the horrors of abortion. He did, however, repeatedly call for the passion of the pro-life movement to be extended to other issues that affect people’s lives. Those issues include poverty, war, capital punishment, and others.

That is why it is now time for members of the pro-life movement to step up and raise their voices regarding those issues as well. For, as the famous quote goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Hopefully, pro-life advocates across the country are ready to take on that challenge.

Enjoy this video from Frank Jasper, OFM.

White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

This one stings. As a Gen-Xer who spent a good chunk of his adolescence in ’90s malls, I am all too familiar with the culture that built the Abercrombie & Fitch brand and what ultimately tore it down. With a wink, Alison Klayman directs this absorbing—at times humorously salacious—exposé of a brazen retailer that rooted itself in exclusory hiring practices and other controversies. It’s cringey, but you can’t look away.

Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story

Cheeky, philanthropic, pervasive, ridiculous: Any of these words could have described Jimmy Savile, a television and radio host who ruled the British airwaves until his death in 2011. But as Rowan Deacon’s film alleges, Savile was also an inexhaustible sex offender who abused untold numbers of minors for decades. Haunting in its presentation and meticulously researched, this horror story shines a light onto a life in the shadows.

What Happened, Miss Simone?

In her varied career, Nina Simone fused gospel, blues, jazz, and folk. Her music was impossible to categorize—as is the artist. In What Happened, Miss Simone?, director Liz Garbus does her level best to define a genius who was, at once, brilliant, hot-tempered, and filled with enough righteous anger to make her and the film inherently watchable. A powerful voice in the civil rights movement, Simone’s legacy is as unique as the notes she played.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

For his crimes of sexual assault against children, Warren Jeffs was sentenced in 2011 to life in prison, plus an additional 20 years. As the head of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, Jeffs leveraged his position as the church “prophet” to unlawfully marry and abuse minors. And while Keep Sweet doesn’t break new ground in its reporting, it really doesn’t have to: Warren Jeffs’ crimes are so horrific and shocking that he is peerless among disgraced religious leaders. This is important viewing.

Devil at the Crossroads

Blues guitarist Robert Johnson’s legacy is twofold. First, he is a titan among musicians of the early 20th century—in fact, some historians have christened the musician the godfather of rock and roll. The other is the legend behind the talent. Rumors have persevered for generations that Johnson, who died in 1938, met the devil at a crossroads deep in the Mississippi Delta and traded his soul for virtuoso talent. And that is where director Brian Oakes places the central narrative in Devil at the Crossroads: in between truth and legend, reality and invention. But he wisely sidesteps any answers in service to a great mystery.