Tag Archives: Mass

Jun 28 2011

The Hour that makes my Day

This is the last part of the meditation of Bishop Fulton Sheen on the HOLY HOUR. Here he talks about the fruits, the benefits that we reap from this beautiful practice of keeping close to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament for an hour everyday.

Sometimes I wished that I had kept a record of the thousands of letters that I have received from priests and laity telling me how they have taken up the practice of the Holy Hour. Every retreat for priests that I ever gave had this as a practical resolution. Too often retreats are like health conferences. There is a general agreement on the need for health, but there is lacking a specific recommendation on how to be healthy. The Holy Hour became a challenge to the priests on retreat, and then when the tapes of my retreats became available to the laity, it was edifying to read of those who responded to grace by watching an hour daily before the Lord. A monsignor who, because of a weakness for alcohol and consequent scandal, was told to leave his parish went into another diocese on a trial basis, where he made my retreat. Responding to the grace of the Lord, he gave up alcohol, was restored to effectiveness in his priesthood, made the Holy Hour everyday and died in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

As an indication of the very wide effect of the Holy Hour, I once received a letter from a priest in England who told me in his own language: “I left the priesthood and fell into a state of degradation.” A priest friend invited him to hear a tape on the Holy Hour from a retreat I had given. Responding to grace, he was restored again to the priesthood and entrusted with the care of a parish. Divine Mercy wrought a change in him…

Many of the laity who have read my books and heard my tapes are also making the Holy Hour.

A state trooper wrote that he had my tapes attached to his motorcycle and would listen to them as he was cruising the highways: “Imagine,” he wrote, “the bewilderment of a speeder being stopped by me while from the tape recorder was coming one of your sermons about the Eucharist.” He found it difficult at first to find a church that was open during the day at a time he could make his Hour. Later on, he found a pastor who was not only willing to open the church, but even willing to make the Hour with him.

Most remarkable of all was the effect the preaching of the Holy Hour had on non-Catholic ministers. I preached three retreats to Protestant ministers-on two occasions to over three hundred in South Carolina and in Florida, and on another occasion to a smaller group at Princeton University. I asked them to make a continuous Holy Hour of prayer in order to combat the forces of evil in the world, because that is what Our Lord asked from the night of His agony. I addressed them:  “You are not blessed with the same Divine Presence in your churches that I believe we possess. But you do have another presence that we do also, and that is the Scripture. At the Vatican Council, we had a solemn procession of the Scriptures into the Council every morning as a form of the Presence of God. You could make the Hour before the Scriptures.” Many came to me later to inquire about the Eucharist, some even asked to join with me in a Holy Hour before the Eucharist.

Most remarkable of all was a telephone call I received early one morning in Los Angeles. The caller announced himself as Reverend Jack McAllister. He was most insistent that he see me. I told him that I was catching a plane for New York at midday and would be glad to see him at the airport before leaving.

A very distinguished Christian gentleman appeared, Mr. Jack McAllister, who told me that he was engaged in a work of world evangelization, sending tapes on the Gospel  to all parts of the world, and also mailing million of copies of sermons and scriptures to every quarter of the globe: “There is one thing that seems to be missing in my world evangelism, and that is a spiritual practice which will make it successful. What would you recommend?” I recounted how much I depended on a daily Holy Hour before the Eucharist, and then suggested that since he was not blessed with the Eucharist, he could ask all of his people to spend one continuous hour with the Scriptures in prayer and reparation for the sins of the world.

One year later I received a pamphlet from him entitles: “Jack McAllister writes to ONE HOUR WATCHERS.” A paragraph from that pamphlet reads: “Please…if you are honestly concerned about making Christ known to literally every creature- give God one hour every day. You are needed in God’s prayer-force to prepare for work in the totally unevangelized areas of the world. Do you love them enough to pray? Will you ‘pay the price’ of spiritual battle for one hour daily?’ Christ asked: ‘What, could you not watch with me one hour?’

At the end of the first year, he wrote and told me that seven hundred ministers had pledged one hour a day…

One of the by-products of the Holy Hour was the sensitiveness to the Eucharistic Presence of Our Divine Lord. I remember once reading in Lacordaire, the famour orator of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris: “Give me the young man who can treasure for days, weeks and years, the gift of a rose or the touch of a hand of a friend.”

Seeing early in my priesthood that marriages break and friends depart when sensitiveness and delicacy are lost, I took  various means to preserve that responsiveness. When first ordained and a student at the Catholic University in Washington, I would never go to class without climbing the few stairs to the Chapel in Caldwell Hall to make a tiny act of love to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Later, at the University of Louvain in Belgium, I would make a visit to our Blessed Lord in every single church I passed on the way to class. When I continued graduate work in Rome and attended the Angelicum and Gregorian, I would visit every Church en route from the Trastevere section where I lived. This is not so easy in Rome, for there are churches on almost every corner. Fred Allen once said that Rome has a church on one corner so that you may pray to get across the street; the church on the other corner is to thank God that you made it.

Later as a teacher as the Catholic University in Washington, I arranged to put a chapel immediately at the entrance of the front door of my home. This was in order that I might never come in or go out without seeing the sanctuary lamp as a summons to adore the Heart of Christ at least for a few seconds. I tried to be faithful to this practice all during my life, and even now in the apartment in New York where I live, the chapel is between my study and my bedroom. This means, that I can never move from one area of my small apartment to another without at least a genuflection and a small ejaculation to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Even at night, when I am awakened and arise, I always make it a point to drop into the chapel for a few seconds, recalling the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, offering a prayer for the priests and religious of the world, and for all who are in spiritual need. Even this autobiography is written in His presence, that He might inspire others when I am gone to make the Hour that makes Life.

Jun 26 2011

‘Holy Hour’- The Hour that makes my Day

By Bishop Fulton Sheen.

Since this Sunday we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, it is also appropriate to talk about here our practice of Holy Hour before the Presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I am posting here, the meditation of the late Bishop Fulton Sheen, on the beauty of “Holy Hour” with the Lord. This would be in three parts, which would be posted today and for the next two days. The first part speaks about the Bishop’s resolution to keep the Holy Hour as one source of his spiritual energy to keep his priestly life meaningful and fruitful. The Second part tells about the purpose of Holy Hour. In the third part, the Bishop spoke about the good effects and the benefits that the Holy Hour had not only for  Bishop Sheen’s ministry but also to other people.

Though the Bishop has long gone but his thoughts are still relevant today and even more helpful for us this time when this traditional Catholic practice of Holy Hour has slowly taken out of the life of many Catholic Parishes in the world.

Here is Bishop Fulton Sheen’s reflection on “Holy Hour”.

The Hour that makes my Day

Fulton Sheen

On the day of my ordination, I made two resolutions:

  1. I would offer the Holy Eucharist every Saturday in honor of the Blessed Mother  to solicit her protection on my priesthood. The Epistle to the Hebrews bids the priest offer sacrifices  not only for others, but also for himself, since his sins are greater because of the dignity of the office.

  2. I resolved also to spend a continuous Holy Hour every day in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

In the course of my priesthood I have kept both of these resolutions. The Holy Hour had its origin in a practice I developed a year before I was ordained. The big chapel in St. Paul’s Seminary would be locked at six o’clock; there were still private chapels available for private devotions and evening prayers. This particular evening during recreation, I walked up and down outside the closed major chapel for almost an hour. The thought struck me- why not make a Holy Hour of adoration in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament? The next day I began, and the practice is now well over sixty years old.

Briefly, here are some reasons why I have kept up this practice  and why I have encouraged it in others:

First, the Holy Hour is not a devotion; it is a sharing in the work of redemption. Our Blessed Lord used the words “hour” and “day” in two totally different connotations in the Gospel of John. “Day” belongs to God; the “hour” belongs to evil. Seven times in the Gospel of John, the word “hour” is used, and in each instance it refers to the demonic, and to the moments when Christ is no longer in the Father’s Hands, but in the hands of men. In the Garden, Our Lord contrasted two “hours”-once was the evil hour “this is your hour”- with which Judas could turn out the lights of the world. In contrast, Our Lord asked: “Could you not watch one hour with Me?” In other words, He asked for an hour of reparation to combat the hour of evil; an hour of victimal union with the Cross to overcome the anti-love of sin.

Secondly, the only time Our Lord asked the Apostles for anything was the night He went into His agony. Then He did not ask all of them…perhaps because He knew He could not count on fidelity. But at least He expected three to be faithful to Him: Peter, James and John. As often in the history of the Church since that time, evil was awake, but the disciples were asleep. That is why there came out of His anguished and lonely heart the sigh: “Could you not watch one hour with me?” Not for an hour of activity did He plead, but for an hour of companionship.

The third reason I keep up the Holy Hour is to grow more and more into His likeness. As Paul puts it: “We are transfigured into His likeness, from splendour to splendour.” We become like that which we gaze upon. Looking into a sunset, the face takes on a golden glow. Looking at the Eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way as the face of Moses was transformed after his companionship with God on the mountain. Something happens to us similar to that which happened to the disciples at Emmaus. On Easter Sunday afternoon when the Lord met them, He asked why they were so gloomy. After spending some time in his presence, and hearing again the secret of spirituality= “The Son of Man must suffer to enter into His Glory”- their time with Him ended, and their “hearts were on fire.”

The Holy Hour. Is it difficult? Sometimes it seemed to be hard, it might mean having to forego a social engagement, or rise an hour earlier, but on the whole it has never been a burden, only a joy. I do not mean to say that all the Holy Hours have been edifying, as for example, the one in the Church of St. Roch in Paris. I entered the church about three o’clock in  the afternoon, knowing that I had to catch a train for Lourdes two hours later. There are only about ten days a years in which I can sleep in the daytime; this was one. I knelt down and said a prayer of adoration, and then sat down to meditate and immediately went to sleep. I woke up exactly at the end of one hour. I said to the Good Lord: “Have I made a Holy Hour?” I thought His angel said, “Well, that the way the Apostles made their first Holy Hour in the Garden, but don’t do it again.”

One difficult Holy Hour I remember occurred when I took a train from Jerusalem to Cairo. The train left  at four o’clock in the morning; that meant very early rising. On another occasion in Chicago, I asked permission from a pastor to go into his Church to make a Holy Hour about seven o’clock one evening, for the church was locked. He then forgot that he had let me in, and I was there for about two hours trying to find a way of escape. Finally I jumped out of a small window and landed in the coal bin. This frightened the housekeeper, who finally came to my aid.

At the beginning of my priesthood I would make the Holy Hour during the day or the evening. As the years mounted and I became busier, I made the Hour early in the morning, generally before Holy Mass. Priests, like everybody else, are divided into two classes: roosters and owls. Some work better in the morning, others at night. An Anglican bishop who was chided by a companion for his short night prayers explained: “I keep prayed up.”

[N.B. Tomorrow's post will be on the Purpose of the Holy Hour, as Bishop Sheen wrote].

Jun 4 2011

Homily for the Feast of the Ascension 2011

A part of botanists were exploring almost inaccessible regions in search of new species of flowers. One day, they spied, through binoculars, a flower of great rarity and beauty. It lay in a deep ravine, with perpendicular cliffs at both sides. To reach it, someone would have to be lowered over the sheer precipice by means of a rope, and it was certainly a very dangerous undertaking.

Approaching a young lad nearby, who was watching them with great curiosity, they said, ‘We’ll give you five pounds if you’ll let us lower you down below to obtain that beautiful rare flower for us.’ The young lad took a look away down into the ravine, and replied, ‘Just a minute. I’ll be back.’ When he returned he was accompanied by an older man. Approaching one of the botanists, he said, ‘I’ll go over the cliff and get that flower for you if this man holds the rope. He’s my father.’

To trust someone is very hard to do. It is even harder when we met that person for the first time. If there is a love at first sight, there is no trust at first sight. It requires time. It requires familiarity. It requires knowing and understanding the other, to be sure, he or she is worthy of trust. Then when we think the time is ripe we would start trusting the person. And this is one of the main messages of ascension- TRUST. And here’s the rub…It’s not US who trust someone, but it is GOD himself trusting us. Can we believe this? God trusts us. God who knows who we are inside and out. God who sees us falling all the time, trusting us…

Yes, Jesus knows and sees his close friends fall short to his expectation all the time. But today’s solemnity tells us that inspite of all weaknesses, his disciples have, Jesus still trusts them… To go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize them in the name of the Trinity, in other words, in the name of Love, and to obey all that Jesus commands them to do. Yes, it is unreal but Jesus just did.

Trusting is not however, a one-sided thing. It is mutual.  SO we have in our reading today, Jesus asking his disciples to trust him as well that ‘he will be with us, always, to the end of time.’ This is quite a challenge for us because there are many instances in our lives when we just lack or even lose trust in God.

However, we just have to go on, not to remain gazing up, to heaven, sort of like wishful thinking, but to do what Jesus has entrusted to us…to proclaim his gospel to all the world. Yes, he has ascended to heaven but,  he is more real now than he was before…Before his presence was confined in a certain culture, certain group, certain time, but now, he is present everywhere.  We just have to continue looking for him here, in His  words we hear in the Mass, in the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, in the presence of people around us. He is here with us…We just have to go on, doing the mission.

We don’t have to go and preach  far off places, wherever we are, we can do it. St Paul offers us a way in our second reading today…TO Pray that everyone will come to know God who is love as was shown in the life of Jesus.

So we just trust Jesus and his words and everything will be sorted out in God’s time…