Mentorella: Our Lady of Mentorella Shrine Celebrates 1500 Years.

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The Shrine of Our Lady of Mentorella is not the easiest place to get to. Just 30 miles outside of Rome, this shrine to Our Lady of Graces sits on the top of a mountain like a storybook castle. To get there it takes nearly two hours by car up a winding road through small villages that few tourists ever see and where cows have the right-of-way. But, at journey's end the site of the shrine of Our Lady of Mentorella is worth the trip, especially this year as Mentorella celebrates its 1500th anniversary.

The complex includes a monastery where the Resurrectionists who minister at the sanctuary live
and the sanctuary itself. The sanctuary of Our Lady of Mentorella (Our Lady of Graces) is a beautiful stone church which exhibits an ancient carved wooden image of Our Lady seated with her child on her lap.

Pilgrims come from all over Europe to visit this sanctuary which may be the oldest Marian shrine in Italy, and perhaps in all of Europe. They come to ask Mary's intercession and to thank her for graces received.

Just after his elevation to the papacy, Pope John Paul II spent a day there in prayer and thanksgiving. He returned often during his papacy to retreat and pray in the quiet of the mountains. Benedict XVI also visited Our lady of Mentorella just after he became pope.

I have been there many times and always find the experience uplifting. Benedictines come to honor the
monastery as one of those founded by St. Benedict. Benedict resided in a cave at Mentorella for about two years.

This weekend there will be a huge celebration for the 1500th anniversary of the Sanctuary. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, retired prefect of the Congregation of Bishops will be Pope Benedict's envoy to celebrate the solemn Mass this Sunday, August 29, recalling the 1500 years of the sanctuary's existence.

I will be thinking of all the members of my Congregation who will be there and, of course, that makes me there in spirit. Our lady of Mentorella, Mother of Graces, you taught your Son how to love, teach me, too to love and serve the Church with all my heart.

Will Christ Come to Chicago?

William T. Stead, journalist, went down with the Titanic. Like last year's newspapers, if it weren't for writing one book, he would be forgotten today.

If Christ Came to Chicago was published in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exhibition, the Worlds' Fair. Stead was in Chicago to record events of the Fair and transmit his views to his London newspaper and he did a great job. But, Stead was not only a newspaper man, he was also a devout Christian.  It was the time when social ministry was resurgent and the move toward a single,world religion for everyone was popular. 

The bookseller who reissued this classic claims to have ten thousand books about Chicago in his personal library.  He'd give them all up to keep his copy of  If Christ came to Chicago.

After looking around Chicago, the Las Vegas of its day, Stead concluded that  prostitution, alcohol consumption, and corruption from top to bottom of the city's authority structure combined to make Chicago one of the most immoral cities in the world. He claimed that if it were not for the poor themselves and the bars where they drank, Chicago would also be one of the most irreligious.

Certainly there were hundreds of churches with much of the populace attending services on sundays but Chicago's churches didn't practice what they preached. They did not take care of the poor, the widows, orphans, families of alcholics and those down on their luck.And, the sinners? Those outside the church doors? The sinners would just have to see the light, someway, someday.



 In 1893, even with the World's Fair in progress, Chicago like the nation was in a deep recession. Not far from the glorious "White City" out on Chicago's  southern  lakeshore, the lives of many Chicagoans stank as badly as its sprawling stockyards. Stead documents and details the city's corruption with the accuracy of an archer who consistently hits the bullseye.

If Christ came to Chicago he'd likely be found in the saloons comforting and feeding His people. If he came to Chicago the church leaders would have to hang their heads in shame because the churches of Jesus Christ had become comfortable with themselves.

I've hauled out Stead's old book again. It's chock full of data and particulars
about Chicago which ring true today.

Could Christ come to Chicago? Of course he could. And, he would comfort the sick, and the sorrowful, feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, not just talk about these things.

As for me, I'm going out to look for someone who needs a cold drink of water.

Danny, tumbling through the Air

I was on my way to the First Mass of a friend but I thought I'd stop at the closest fast food joint so I could get something to eat. I'd celebrated Sunday Eucharist and visited two people in the hospital and it had been a long time since breakfast.

There it was, a Popeye's Restaurant. I pulled into the drive-through, gave my order and drove up to the service window. I placed my car in park and reached for my wallet when suddenly there was a loud crashing sound. In the instant that I I looked up I saw that a motorcycle had plowed into an SUV and the motorcyclist was flying up into the air high above the scene.  The person in flashy motorcycle uniform and full helmet seemed to float as he/she made a complete flip in the air and came down hard on the asphalt.

I looked at the girl at the service window and yelled, "Call 911!" I ran to where
the victim was lying face down on the ground, not moving. It was a young man, probably in his early twenties. Several of his friends were standing around just staring, their fine, brightly colored motorcycles parked where they had left them in the street.

After perhaps two minutes the guy began to stir and I and another man
held him down. His right arm was obviously broken and likely his hip. He had blood on his left hand but I couldn't see where it came from. We kept him on the ground until the ambulance came.

When he came around, he asked me, "What happened?" I told him there had been an accident. "What's your name?, I asked. "Danny,' he said. "Oh, I'm
messed up! he whispered. (He actually used a more graphic phrase.)
"You're going to be O.K. I said. I'm a priest and I'm with you and praying for you.

We kept him flat on the ground until the paramedics came. I guess it was five minutes or so after the accident when they arrived..

I told this story to a priest friend of mine and he asked me: "What kicked in first, your role as priest or medical person?"  I answered, "Medical person." But, when I though about it later I realized that my response was just me, priest and medical person and concerned citizen and Christian.

I've always thought that the priesthood is all about healing so maybe I don't have a division in my person where I act as a priest or a provider. I'm me and I help. I think I'm a better priest, though, than I am a medic.  I can tell you, it is very humbling to be at the side of someone who may be dying.

What would you do? Now, when I look deeper into this situation, the question comes, "Why was I there at all?" Surely it was the Lord's guidance and providence that moved me to be where I was and to help as I could.

I haven't been able to find out anything more about Danny but I trust he is O.K. and will survive this accident, messed up or not --one of God's children who simply loves motorcycles.

Talk about "Days of hope and resurrection!"

Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

"What does she see in him?" is asked every time a wife forgives her bungling husband. It's usually asked by someone who doesn't love the poor guy. The wife does see something that others don't see, although that knowledge doesn't make it any easier to tolerate an annoying brother-in-law much less a loudmouth. Your sister loves him because she sees something else, she sees more than what you see.  And, what she sees is, to her, beautiful. What you see makes you shake your head, and sometimes grit your teeth.

What has happened to our eyes? Why is beauty something we rarely see? Take a sunrise, for example.  "Big Red" rising from the horizon and scattering the darkness to bring on morning is, to many people nothing important. The sun is just there and not too worthy of attention. Other people, look and say "Wow! That's beautiful."

Too many people have lost the sense of beauty.  They have people to see, things to do, and time, like money, is fleeting. There's no time to stop and smell the roses.

I propose that each day we stop, each of us and stare deeply into something, anything, even someone.

There is incredible harmony of line in a spider web, the spider itself, even a kind of beauty in the revulsion some of us feel for the dark legged spindly thing scurrying across the floor.  The first reaction is "Where's a shoe?"instead of stopping and getting a good look at one of God's great wonders.

We just have to stop more often and recognize beauty.  It's everywhere.  Just like God.