Thanksgiving Mass in Honor of
Founder of the Pauline Family
Saint Joseph Parish Church -
Boston
Massachusetts
October 12, 2003
The episode from the Gospel of
St. Mark we’ve just heard is a fitting introduction to our celebration this
afternoon honoring the memory of the Founder of the Pauline Family, Blessed
James Alberione (beatified by our Holy Father earlier this year on Mercy
Sunday, April 27th).
If there is a lesson that
Father Alberione’s life declares in loud and unmistakable tones it is that we
have given nothing to God until we have given him everything.
Which in the nub of the
problem of the rich young man we’ve just heard about. He is well intentioned, fascinated by Jesus, and yearns to know
from him what he has to do to gain eternal life. But no sooner does Jesus explain what merits and qualifies for it
– that he walks away. In this, he’s
somewhat of a reminder of those people who swear by religious practice and love
of neighbor – so long as this remains low-risk and low-cost. Which misses the whole point.
Jesus tries to take the young
man to another level of understanding.
To yearn for and desire goods that endure and are lasting means turning
around the way we look at goods that are not.
And he offers him the golden opportunity to be drawn out of his
narrowness, out of the possessions which are really possessing him… by inviting
him to a “letting go”, a letting go that would open and free him to trustingly
follow the Master of the fullness of life.
If anything, Father Alberione
started out as a poor young man, the fifth son of modest migrant farm
parents. He was baptized the day after
his birth because of a great anxiety about his frail health. From then, a hunger for ‘the goods that
last’ was instilled in his earliest years, thanks especially to his
mother.
If there is a scriptural
framework in which to situate the great thrust of Father Alberiones’
exceptional life in order to better understand and appreciate its scope, I suggest
the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles – the Pentecost chapter.
Alberione had a passion for
everything that that chapter evokes:
The beginning of the Church; the Gospel being heard and known in many
tongues; the fire and breadth of the Word of God penetrating human culture; the
apostles fearlessly reaching out with a missionary openness to all peoples;
Mary at the center and inspiration of apostolic initiative. These elements and pieces that make up the
package of Pentecost were so much of the fabric of this tremendous priest.
Going further in the same
chapter of Acts, there is the launching and explosion of evangelization. The sharing of the message of Jesus bounds
out of the Cenacle, a sharing that would become once and for all the I-d of
every follower of Christ.
This is what the Founder of
the Pauline Family was about – a life-long anxiety to have the Gospel be
something imminent in the lives of people today. Much like Peter and Paul in the earliest period of the Church, who
strove beyond themselves to make the words of Jesus impact and prove vital in a
world that was in large part unknowing and unbelieving.
Pope John Paul has called us
to a new evangelization in this just born millennium. We look around and understand why we should urgently be at it
heart and soul. Just about a hundred
years before, on the night that separated the 19th from the 20th
century, Father Alberione, as a 16-year-old seminarian, praying before the
Blessed Sacrament in night-time adoration in the Cathedral of Alba a city not
far from Turin, intuited the same urgency of that very call.
In
time, with the help of a wise spiritual director, he came to understand that
the Lord was guiding him toward a mission of preaching the Gospel, in the
spirit of the Apostle Paul, to the people of our time with the means of our
time. Their potential, even then, was
far-reaching.
So
in August 1914, six years after his ordination, the intuition of that
night-time adoration would bring him to an initial decisive step. In the humblest of surroundings, with the
most meager of means, his first Religious Congregation, the Society of St.
Paul, (Priests and Brothers) was given life – and with it a small publishing
operation. The Daughters of St. Paul
would follow a year later, and then at intervals of approximately ten years,
the founding of the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, given to Eucharistic
Adoration and service of the priesthood and Liturgy, the Pastorelle Sisters
engaged in parish ministry, the Queen of Apostles Sisters for vocations, plus
four Secular Institutes and the Union of Pauline Lay Cooperators. All of these Institutes together would come
to be known as the Pauline Family.
No one before him in the
centuries old history of religious orders and congregations gave as many or as
diverse foundations to the Church. But
as remarkable as this may be, what stands out about Father Alberione was his
foresight and ability in forging this fledgling group into a worldwide force
for ministering to contemporary humanity through the many forms of
communication.
This broke new ground. It was a determination to give the Gospel a
pulpit, a voice, a hearing in the marketplaces of the world … or wherever
people were, wherever there was human exchange.
He was enamored of the great
figure of Christ he found in the writings of St. Paul, a Christ bearing upon
the mind, the will and the heart of every human being, this Jesus who had
defined himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life. He saw this complete Jesus as the unsurpassed Teacher and answer
to all of modern humanity’s restlessness, aimlessness, and woundedness. He drove himself relentlessly and
unsparingly to make this Christ the model and core not only of his own life,
but of the Pauline communications ministry.
That contemporary culture
should be made aware of God’s mercy and providence in the media language of our
day, was not, in Father Alberione’s mind, simply the result of innovative
technique, skill and creative organization, critical as these were to its effectiveness. Enormous challenges and sacrifices were
involved. So the mission he gave life
to would have everything to do with the deepest qualities of consecration and
commitment.
Over 87 years of a full and
incredibly active and laborious life, he gave nothing more time to than
prayer. Profound prayer, regenerative
prayer, Eucharistic prayer, prayer very much in the style of St. Paul.
Our Holy Father has been
telling us again and again how indispensable prayer and contemplation are to
the essence and life of the Church – and to the equilibrium of each of our
lives. And the innumerable examples of
integrity and holiness that he has presented us during this pontificate, men
and women of every vocation and strata of life, persons of extraordinary
ingenuity and courage – but first of all faithful to their callings and
tenacious in selflessness and charity – they are reminders of a fidelity and
passionate witness to the living Gospel of Jesus Master in a turbulent
time. The saints and blessed of our
lifetime rejuvenate and encourage each of our faith journeys.
And if there are aspects of
the Church that no longer speak to segments of people today, models always
do. Not just models of saints of the
past, but models of holiness and heroic goodness lived out in the present. This is obvious in young people today who in
the example of contemporary models of self-giving, see and understand not that
the Church is powerful, but that she is receptive, the bearer of Jesus’ grace,
wisdom and life.
I close with these words of
Father Alberione:
“A good part of today’s
world suffers from a shortage of bread.
There is a far greater shortage of the spiritual bread brought by
Jesus. ‘I am the Bread of Life,’ he
said. Countless people live complexly
unaware of their destiny. They have no
other thought than the present. Yet in
a short time, death brings them to eternity.
There are few to prepare them with this bread. “There is no one to break it for them.” They die of hunger without truly understanding their hunger. Jesus is Bread/Truth. The apostle of the media of communication is
another Jesus Christ who echoes and amplifies to people of every age and place
what Jesus preached and taught on earth.”
On this Sunday afternoon honoring
Father Alberione, we thank God for the model of love and great-hearted faith
that Blessed James was for our time. We
look to him and learn from him. And we
ask the Holy Spirit to inspire in us his same ardor for God’s Word, for the
Eucharist, for the Church, and for the people of our time.