The Communion of Saints

Saturday morning I was able to experience so clearly why I love to worship at Franciscan University's Christ the King chapel, and particularly why I love Fr. Michael Scanlon.

The Mass that was celebrated was in memory of the various saints of the Franciscan order. Fr. Mike preached simply but with passion about the reality of our family in the Church, our ancestors, the saints. It is perhaps hard to convey how profoundly and how simply this truth completely changes, completely fulfills my heart.

Others can recount better than I the story Fr. Mike has told in his book Let the Fire Fall and in countless homilies, talks and conversations about his own biological family experience. What it boils down to for me is that there was pain, and an experience of failure of this basic human unit to bring blessing to life. His experience reminds me a bit of Pope John Paul II's youth, which was also a crucible of suffering during the Nazi era. The beauty, the glory, is that through their respective crucibles of suffering, God brought forth gold, meant to give hope and life to vast multitudes. Both men seem to me like forerunners, who were destined to understand the sufferings of those they were called to serve by experiencing it first hand.

Therefore, Fr. Mike is deeply aware, deeply conscious, of the pain many FUS students have experienced in their families. He speaks as one who knows the glorious antidote to the familiar pain. Parusia. Heaven. Sanctity. Resurrection. In Fr. Mike I see a tremendous witness to the reality of these things -- so much so that I really hardly see him at all. I just behold the fact that these realities are, well, real. I see St. Francis, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Cecelia, St. John, St. Francis Xavier, St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Bernard of Clairvaux -- all these folks who have touched my life. I think of December 27, 1991 when I stood in the Catholic bookstore, having just committed myself to following the Lord into the Catholic Church, and "meeting" St. Cecelia, patroness of music whose feast is my birthday. I remember the sense, more real than if I'd entered a room of flesh and blood people at the time (I have a tendency to "shut off" in groups of people, and this tendency was even stronger then) of welcome and meaning and fellowship and life, coming from the whole court of heaven. It was as if St. Cecelia had the job of introducing the whole extended family to me. And I finally knew I had a true home, and that my life had not been a mistake. Glory.

This is what I experienced yesterday morning with Fr. Mike. This is my family, the Church. This is my profound love.