The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

In one of history’s darkest times and places, Saint Maximilian Kolbe continued his life’s greatest quest: to know, honor, and echo the assent of Mary to the Lord.

August 14, 2024 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined as a dogma of faith the bodily Assumption into Heaven of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The precise words of Pope Pius are found in the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, “The Most Bountiful God,” defining what much of the Church already believed, and now holds as a matter of truth:

“We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed truth that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

It was not without controversy. Pius XII thus became the first pope in a century to define a new dogma of faith. Five papacies earlier, in 1869, Pope Pius IX sought, cajoled, and in the end imposed, the doctrine of papal infallibility. In his book, Making Saints, former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward described the doctrine of infallibility as a “sheathed sword” (Making Saints, p. 314). He described it that way because, from the time of the doctrine’s inception in 1869, a declaration of papal infallibility has only been invoked once: a century later in 1950 when Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be an infallible tenet of faith.

This was not just a unilateral pronouncement from on high. Before defining the dogma in 1950, Pius XII sought and received an amazing response of affirmation from the “sensus fidelium,” the assent of the faithful from throughout the world. The Our Sunday Visitor Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine describes this beautifully:

“Infallibility in belief pertains to the whole Church. ‘The whole body of the faithful … cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (the ‘sensus fidei’) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent to matters of faith and morals.” (Lumen Gentium)

“To understand properly how the whole people of God is infallible in its sense of the faith (sensus fidei, sensus fidelium) it must be born in mind that the body of the faithful goes beyond limits both of place and, especially, of time. The People of God always includes those of past generations as well as those in the present moment. The former are in fact the vast majority, and it is easier to ascertain what they believed. It is that belief that marks the sensus fidelium and points infallibly to the truth." (p. 334)

To help in understanding this concept of the Universal Church that includes the faith of all generations past, see my post, “The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead” (linked again at the end of
this post). It is evidence of the ongoing connectedness of the faithful departed to the life of the Church.

I found this concept to be a stunning affirmation, not only of what we believe, but of why we believe it. The idea that infallibility includes the unwavering faith of the vast majority of the People of God taken as a whole over the span of millennia is mind-boggling truth.

The faith of the entire Church, from its birth at Pentecost to the present, points to a belief in Mary as Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the New Ark of the Covenant. Pope Pius XII strongly considered this before defining as infallible the Dogma of the Assumption in 1950. From the Chair of Peter, Pius XII sought the assent of the faithful in the present through his encyclical, Deiperae Virginis Mariae, to inquire whether Mary’s bodily Assumption should be defined.

As a result, an amazing number of petitions reached Rome from every corner of the Church. The petitions included those of 8,000,000 laity, 50,000 religious women, 32,000 priests, 2,505 archbishops and bishops, 311 cardinals, and 81 patriarchs of the Eastern Church. If this demonstration of assent had been able to span the entire life of the Church the result would have been immeasurable.

From the earliest days of the Church many considered the Assumption of Mary — centuries before it was defined as a tenet of faith — to be, in the words of Pius XII, “the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve” — original sin. In the Eastern Church, a “Memorial of Mary” was already being celebrated on August 15 in the Fifth Century. It spread from the East and came ot be known as the koimesis in Greek and the dormitio in Latin, both of which mean the “falling asleep.” By the Eighth Century, belief in the bodily Assumption of Mary was widely accepted in both the East and West.

In the 19th Century, John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote that both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are implicit in her identification as the “New Eve,” a title given to Mary since the Second Century. Just as the Resurrection of Jesus was the essential element of His victory over sin and death, Mary shares that victory in her designation as the New Eve, and in the words of Jesus at the foot of the Cross as the spiritual Mother of all. Seeing His Mother at the foot of the Cross, Jesus said ot her, “Woman, behold your son.” And then to the Disciple John, “Behold your Mother.” It was an adoption arrangement (John 19:26-27).

Among the earliest titles of Mary is Theotokos, Greek for “The Bearer of God.” For the Scriptural foundation of this belief and its implications, see my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

“What Will Become of You?”

In the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus at Mount Tabor. Both Moses and Elijah, according to Scripture, entered heaven in both body and soul. The appearances of Mary at Fatima, Lourdes, Tepeyac Hill in Mexico, and others all point to an understanding of Mary as existing still in that same form. I wrote of the details of one of these visits in “A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

There is no saint of modern times with a stronger and more dedicated devotion ot Mary than Saint Maximilian Kolbe who seemed to live with a perpetual presence of the Immaculata in his field of view. Long before he was the Saint of Auschwitz and Founder of the Militia Immaculata, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was simply “Raymond,” a highly intelligent and gifted boy born into poverty in a rural farming community in Poland.

Like me, Raymond Kolbe was fascinated by the sciences of astronomy and cosmology and actually once built a working rocket as a boy. Also like me, he exasperated his mother at times. One day his frustrated mother scolded him, “Raymond! Whatever will become of you?” Filled with grief, young Kolbe went immediately to a local church and turned to the Mother of God with the same question. According to Kolbe’s own words as reported by my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC in his wonderful book, 33 Days to Morning Glory,

“Then the virgin appeared to me holding in her hands two crowns, one white and one red. She looked at me with love and she asked me if I would like to have them. The white meant that I would remain pure, and the red meant that I would be a martyr. I answered, ‘yes, I want them.’ Then she looked at me tenderly and disappeared.”

Father Gaitley went on to describe that what was meant by “pure” in this sense was that Kolbe would never allow evil or dishonesty to take root in his heart. And it never did. On August 14, the date this is posted, the Church honors Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He also happens to be my own Patron Saint as well as that of my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, and the Patron Saint of this blog. To the best of our ability, we follow in his spiritual footsteps, but his footsteps took him to an ultimate sacrifice. The nature of that sacrifice, along with Maximilian’s Auschwitz prison number 16670, now a badge of honor, is expressed on Pornchai’s T-shirt atop this section of our post. Our friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, described the footsteps of Saint Maximilian in brief but familiar prose in 33 Days to Morning Glory :

“In 1941, after decades of incredibly fruitful apostolic labors in Poland and Japan, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Before his arrest, his brother Franciscans had pleaded with him to go into hiding. He said he was grateful for their loving hearts but couldn’t follow their advice.

“He later explained why: ‘I have a mission to fulfill.’ That mission was fulfilled on the eve of the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven when, after he volunteered to take the place of another prisoner condemned to starvation, the impatient Nazis finished Kolbe off with a lethal injection. Thus, St. Maximilian died a martyr of charity and received the red crown from his Immaculata.”

Two hours before his arrest, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe penned what Father Gaitley called “the single most important theological reflection of his life. It was nothing less than the answer to a question that eluded him for many years, the question he had pondered over and over throughout his life was: “Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?”

In the document, according to Father Gaitley, Kolbe raised a key point. In the appearances of Mary at Lourdes, Mary did not say to St. Bernadette, “I am immaculately conceived,” but rather she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was thus clarified for Maximilian that through a special grace from God, Mary was in fact immaculately conceived in the womb of her own mother with no stain of original sin and that grace became her very identity by the as yet unseen merits of her Son. Understanding this means stepping out of conventional time and space for a moment into the mystery of the “nunc stans” the "Eternal Now" in which God dwells and in which He envisions all time and space as one. It is a difficult concept for our linear existence to ponder, but I have pondered it for my entire life.

Father Gaitley asks (p. 52): “Why does Mary make the grace she received at her conception her very name?” Clearly, Mary is not a divine being. Kolbe wrestled with this divinity problem for decades, and it ultimately led to a solution.

There are two Immaculate Conceptions, one created (Mary) and the other uncreated (the Holy Spirit). Before Mary, there was the uncreated Immaculate Conception, “the One Who for all eternity springs from God the Father and God the Son as an uncreated conception of love, the prototype of all conceptions that multiply life throughout the universe. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit is the 'conception' that springs from their love. The Holy Spirit is the “Immaculate Conception” b e c a u s e, being God, He is without sin.

Is Mary then a personification of the Holy Spirit? The truth of this union between the Holy Spirit and Mary is found in a somewhat difficult passage in Maximilian’s own writings as reported by Father Gaitley:

"What type of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the ‘essence’ of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true.” ( Gaitley, p. 53)

“In what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very Love of the Most Holy Trinity ... . In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being” (Gaitley, p. 53-54)

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.”

— From the Magnificat of Mary, Luke 1:46-48

In “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God,” I explored a similar Marian theology, and from it I think I can finally make sense of what Saint Maximilian has proposed. Mary, Theotokos , the Bearer of God, is an eternal repository of the Holy Spirit. Both my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I owe her a great debt — not for saving us from Earthly Powers of destruction, because they actually mean little, but for preserving us in faith despite them.

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“Remember that those who ask for Heaven of the Immaculata will surely achieve it because she is unable to deny us anything nor is the Lord God able to deny her anything. We shall shortly know exactly what it will be like in Heaven. Surely in a hundred years none of us will be walking on this Earth. But what are a hundred years in the face of what we have been through? Soon, therefore, provided we are well prepared under the protection of the Immaculata.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe, 1941

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please spend some time in prayer and thanksgiving at the live feed of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s own Adoration Chapel featured below after all our posts at Beyond These Stone Walls.

You may also like these related posts:

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost

Events at the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts of the Apostles have roots deep in Salvation History. In the traditional Hebrew Pentecost, the Book of Ruth is read.

May 24 , 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

(Note: The graphic above depicts Ruth and Naomi preparing to depart Moab to venture down to Bethlehem.)

Shannon Bream, host of Fox News Sunday, is a lawyer by training having earned her Doctor of Law degree at a prestigious Florida law school. Prior to that, she graduated magna cum laude from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, a school founded in 1971 by evangelist Jerry Falwell. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bream has been well informed by her alma mater, and has written several books with an evangelical biblical perspective. Her titles to date include, The Women of the Bible Speak, The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak, and The Love Stories of the Bible Speak.

One of the heroic women of the Biblical literature Ms. Bream wrote about in the first of those titles is Ruth, heroine of the Book of Ruth. It is a brief but remarkable story. In Jewish tradition, its author was the Hebrew judge Samuel. Although the book is descriptive of the period “when the judges ruled” (1:1), scholars have variously argued for its oral tradition in the time of the monarchy of King David (10th to 8th century BC), in the postexilic era (5th to 4th century BC), or somewhere in between the two.

The Book of Ruth tells of a family from the ancient town of Bethlehem in Judah that takes refuge in the country of Moab during a famine. While there, the sons of the Judean family marry Moabite women. When the father and the two sons die from unknown causes, the bereaved mother, Naomi, determines to return to her ancestral home in Bethlehem. She urges her daughters-in- law, Ruth and Orpah, to remain in Moab with their own people.

Orpah remains, but Ruth discerns that her duty of devotion to her deceased young husband also extends to his bereaved mother, Naomi, who is now widowed and alone. So Ruth insists on accompanying Naomi to Bethlehem. The story provides a moving quote of Ruth that over the centuries has found its way into the popular music of Christian liturgy:

“Wherever you go, I shall go. Wherever you dwell, I shall dwell there also. Your people will be my people, and your God shall be my God too. Wherever you die, I shall die, and there shall I be buried beside you.”

— Ruth 1:16-17

In Bethlehem, Ruth’s beauty, devotion and kindness soon attract the attention of Naomi’s near kinsman Boaz, (2:l-4:12). Despite the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, Boaz, a Jew, marries her, and by an act of Divine Providence she becomes the great grandmother of King David, of whose lineage Jesus was born. This is noted in the genealogy at the beginning of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. It’s an odd inclusion in the genealogy:

“... and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Raihab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the King.”

— Matthew 1:4-6

It was highly unusual for any genealogy to add the name of the maternal line in Sacred Scripture, but both Ruth and the small and inconspicuous Book of Ruth have an outsized influence and footprint on the faith of Israel and Pentecost. It is evidence of the Spirit of God guiding Salvation History across millennia. I must remember that when I am bowed low by whatever cross I happen to carry in this time. The Great Tapestry of God has threads I can only see from the back in another life.

Pentecost and a Bigger Picture

As a story, the Book of Ruth provides an account of the series of events that led up to the inclusion of a Moabite in the ancestry of King David, and one thousand years later, of Joseph, spouse of Mary, and, by extension and adoption, Jesus. The story’s emphasis on the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, her acceptance by the people of Bethlehem despite this fact, her place in the genealogy of King David, and the acceptance of the book as part of the Hebrew canon all suggest a deeper and more complex purpose.

So it comes as no surprise that the Book of Ruth is read in the Hebrew observance of “Shavuot,” known in English as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. It is one of three pilgrimage festivals requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for its observance. In the Hebrew calendar, Shavuot falls on the Sixth day of Sivan, the day after the conclusion of seven weeks — the fiftieth day after Passover. Hence the name, “Pentecost,” from Greek, “pentekoste” meaning fiftieth day.

In later Old Testament times, the Festival of the Harvest also became associated with the giving of the law to Moses upon Mount Sinai which, by tradition, also took place on the Sixth Day of Sivan. Because of the association with the giving of the Torah, a tradition evolved among Jews to honor Shavuot with an all-night vigil called the “Tikkun for Shavuot Eve.” It included readings from the first and last verses of each weekly Torah reading, a selection of Psalms, paragraphs from the six Orders of the Krishnah, a list of the 613 precepts of Moses, and the Book of Ruth.

It was for the observance of the Hebrew Pentecost that Mary, Mother of the Lord, and the Apostles were present in Jerusalem for the events that would become the Christian Pentecost (Acts 2: 1-47) the fiftieth day after the Resurrection of Jesus. It was the descent of the Holy Spirit among them. It was the birth of the Church.

When Beyond These Stone Walls began in the summer of 2009, I had no idea that I would still be writing posts from prison for it in 2023. I wrote about many things, but a priority for me was to write posts about Sacred Scripture with a focus on some of the Sunday Gospel readings which many readers seemed to like.

But I have run into an unforeseen problem. I have tried to research and write special posts at major feasts such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost but in 2023 I am faced with writing about the same Scriptures again and again. I do not have the luxury of looking out at a congregation gathered for Mass to adjust the length of my homily by the number of people I see yawning or dropping off.

Writing at Pentecost has been one of my biggest challenges. For one thing, Pentecost always comes at or near the anniversary of my priesthood ordination which I also feel obliged to mention in a post. It would be an insult to Catholics if I ignore my own ordination. In 2022, Pentecost fell on June 5th which was also my 40th anniversary of priesthood. So for the first time I combined the two subjects into one post. The next few paragraphs are an excerpt from “Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost”:

It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is ‘ruah,’ and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is ‘ruah ha-Qodesh.’ It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2) :

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and again in the Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)

When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.

The Great Gifts of the Spirit

“Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

— Peter at the Institution of the Eucharist, Luke 22:33

In Genesis 11:1-9 is related the story of a great tower erected in the land of Shinar in Babylon. The great Tower of Babel was left unfinished because Yahweh confounded the speech of the builders so they could not comprehend each other. The city was thenceforth called “Babel” which is the etymology of our word, “babble,” a term for incomprehensible speech. The story was an imaginative attempt to account for the origin of the diversity of languages.

The tower is today recognized as a “ziggurat,” a towering pyramid of successively recessed levels of stone. For the Babylonians, its purpose was ceremonial as a “cosmic mountain,” symbolic of the Earth itself. Its height was seen as a way to God as described in Genesis 11:4, a tower that “could reach to the heavens.”

As in many such stories, there is both a literal history behind it and an interpretation of it in the mind of the Ancient Near East. The tower became in time the story of God’s scattering of the human race into diverse languages. The story of Pentecost in Acts 2:5-12 has “men from every nation under heaven” in a multitude that came together and were bewildered as each heard the witness of the Apostles in their own languages.

They were “Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya, and Cyrene, and parts of Rome, Jews and Greeks alike, Cretans and Arabs.” They were the known world of that time, all the nations of Northern Africa and the Middle East surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, literally the Sea of Middle Earth. Each heard of the mighty works of God in their own languages (Acts 2:5-12). For some, it was an answer to the divisions of our Babel-ing.

But others only mocked, accusing the Apostles of drunkenness: “they are filled with new wine.” Then came the great discourse of Peter (Acts 2:14-36) which began with a spirited defense of the Apostles:

“Men of Judea, and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose for it is only the third hour of the day.” And then Peter spoke from the Prophet Joel, and in the end, a great multitude came to believe and were received into the Church.

This was Peter filled with the Spirit and fortitude, the same Peter who, just 54 days earlier at the Last Supper vowed to the Lord that he would go with him to prison and to death. It was the same Peter who just a day later fell to the lower depths of Golgotha to deny three times that he even knew Him.

In my life as a priest, the wind of Pentecost has been more like a Category Five storm than the gentle breeze of the Spirit I once envisioned priesthood to be. After graduation with a double major in psychology and philosophy from St Anselm College in New Hampshire in 1978, I enrolled in a four year post-graduate degree program in theological studies at St. Mary Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland from 1978 to 1982. Summers and between semesters were spent in a three-year counseling internship for the Baltimore County Police Crisis Intervention Unit. It was an education in human suffering.

One of my seminary professors was a young priest named Fr Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, a popular Catholic author who taught courses in Scripture and spirituality. Forty-one years later, just as I started this post, I discovered Father Rolheiser again in the pages of Give Us This Day, a monthly prayer and liturgical guide published by Liturgical Press in Collegeville, Minnesota. He had a brief reflection on Pentecost that I have been trying to decipher. Here is a segment:

“The Christian paschal cycle has five distinct moments: Good Friday, Easter Sunday, the Forty Days, the Ascension, and Pentecost. These were five moments in Jesus’ life as he moved through his death, his resurrection, his forty days of post-resurrection appearances, his ascension, and his sending of the Holy Spirit. ... The five interpenetrating moments in Jesus’ life that stretch from Good Friday to Pentecost invite us to always: Name your deaths; Claim your births; Mourn what you lost; Don’t cling to what you had but let it ascend. If we do this, Pentecost will happen in our lives. We will receive a new spirit for the life that we are, in fact, living.”

— Fr Ron Rolheiser, OMI, “Pentecost Will Happen”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this Pentecost post with its challenges to let the Spirit of Truth and Grace dwell within us. You may also like these related posts:

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

Priesthood, The Signs of the Times and The Sins of the Times

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Please note that Pentecost ends the Easter Season. We will be removing our Holy Week Retreat as a menu option, but we will include it from henceforth as a Library Category of posts. It was well received among readers, and I thank you.

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Personal Intention from Fr Gordon MacRae: May 24, 2023 marks one year since the tragic losses of life in Uvalde, Texas. Please pray for the people of this deeply wounded community and for the healing of this community's broken hearts.

Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing

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Our Adoration Chapel founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe will remain at Beyond These Stone Walls. Jesus came to us through Mary, and now we may reciprocate. Thank you for spending time in Eucharistic Adoration. Please also offer a prayer for me because I am the only one among us unable to see the Chapel.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marked forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?

June 1, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

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“When you were young, you fastened your belt and walked where you would; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten them and take you where you do not wish to go.”

The Resurrected Christ to Peter (John 21:18)

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The few lines just below the top image on many blog posts are sometimes called a “meta-description.” Its purpose is to provide search engines like Google a summary of a post’s content in 164 characters or less (including spaces). Our meta-descriptions are not very useful in that regard because they are written with actual readers in mind and not search engines.

Our Editor’s meta-description atop this post ends with a question: What would I have done forty years ago on June 5, 1982 if I had before me then a vision of my future life as a priest? When I was unjustly sent to prison in 1994, I was asked that question often. I never had an easy answer.

After I began writing from prison at the invitation of Cardinal Avery Dulles fourteen years later in 2008, most people had stopped asking me that question. I think most just assumed that my life as a priest was over, or that whatever was left would just collapse and vanish under the weight of prison. Some thought the Vatican would throw me overboard without evidence simply because I am in prison. After 40 years as a priest, and 28 of them as a prisoner, none of those things has happened. I am now asked a different question: What sustains an identity of priesthood in such a place?

Also atop this post is a haunting quote from the Gospel of John (21:18). It’s from an appearance of the Risen Christ to Simon Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. Jesus sought restitution from Peter whose courage gave way to a lie days earlier at Calvary. Peter had an opportunity to live up to his own words declared on the day before the Crucifixion, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:23). At Calvary, as the accusing mob pressed in, Peter’s courage failed. To appease the mob, he three times denied knowing Jesus.

I wrote in a post just weeks ago, “Shaming Benedict XVI, Catholic Schism, Cardinal Zen Arrested,” that we saw faith falter when only 92 of the world’s Catholic bishops signed a letter confronting a threat of Catholic schism in Germany while most others remained silent. We saw this again as prelates in the largest Christian denomination on Earth remained strangely silent after the Chinese Communist government’s unjust arrest of Hong Kong’s 90-year-old Joseph Cardinal Zen.

And we saw it yet again when only 15 U.S. bishops spoke out in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who courageously barred U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Communion until she repents for decades of abject promotion of abortion. He acted as he must in pastoral care for her soul.

But I have no legitimate judgment of Peter at Calvary. It is not easy to stand up to a mob. In the verse that immediately follows the one I quote from Saint John atop this post, the Lord told Peter what would happen when he finds his faith and it informs his strength. He did find it, and Tradition tells us that he was crucified for it in A.D. 67. The flaws of bishops, which only the spiritually blind deny sharing with them in abundance, need not preclude the courage that Christ summons forth.

An Anniversary of Priesthood

A good friend, Fr. Stuart MacDonald, just celebrated his 25th anniversary of priesthood ordination. This is usually a joyful event for a priest, for his family, and for his parish. Father Stuart sent me a wonderful photograph of the Mass of Thanksgiving at his diocesan cathedral. The recently renovated church is beautiful, and the hundreds of Father Stuart’s family, friends and parishioners could not have been prouder, or happier.

Behind the main altar in the photo above is a glorious stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is difficult to look at that sanctuary and see anything else. And yet Father Stuart stands out incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, his appearance one of faithful witness inspired by the salvific scene of divine restitution enacted in glory just behind him.

I pondered the scene for a long time, taking in the beauty of the restored sanctuary’s art and architecture. It is all focused on that one place where priestly hands would soon raise in sacrifice the very Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world — even the sins of a three times denial of Him by Peter who would then become the First Bishop of Rome.

I tend not to look at such scenes and think about myself. I was so proud of Father Stuart because he, too, has endured the suffering of the Cross in his years as a priest. Like so many, he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety during the long bludgeoning of the priesthood over the last twenty-five years. It has come from all sides, even lately from some of our bishops. Father Stuart is fortunate to have one who supports him. In an age of cancelled priests, it is not always so.

It was some time before I contrasted the photograph sent by Father Stuart with the scene in my prison cell late at night on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost, as I offer my own Mass of Thanksgiving for 40 years of priesthood. Able to obtain elements for Mass only once per week, I join in that sacrificial offering in a 60-square-foot prison cell in the dark. The chair upon which I offer Mass is a 5-gallon plastic trash bucket emptied and turned upside down for the occasion.

There is something vaguely prophetic in that. Like the bucket, I, too, have to be emptied before Mass of all the harmful refuse of prison. At 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, after the last of the chaos and noise that fills this place subsides, I remove my hard-earned Mass kit from a hidden shelf in a corner. The plastic storage box relinquishes a small stole, a corporal and purificator, a sturdy plastic coffee cup. It is all I have for this purpose, but never used for any other.

Lastly comes a host and a quarter-ounce vial of sacramental wine. From a shelf at the foot of my concrete bunk comes a Sacramentary and a small battery powered book light. A concrete slab protrudes from the cinder block wall at the base of the sole, heavily barred cell window. The otherwise torturous prison lights beyond provide just enough light for Mass.

The Mass is always Ad Orientam, facing East, because that is the direction toward which my window faces. I am grateful for this despite it being of no design of my own. My little booklight illuminates the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which affords an opportunity to name the living and the dead who accompany me in this Mass. You are always remembered there.

There is no one else physically in attendance except my non-Catholic roommate who begins snoring up a storm in his upper bunk about an hour before my Mass begins. It is not exactly the hymn of a Heavenly choir, but, like most of the harsh sounds of prison, I have learned to tune it out.

So there, sitting on my bucket — ummm, I mean the big upside-down plastic one — Heaven reaches into a place where God often seems absent, but it only seems that way. When I elevate the host for the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, it is in equal measure just as glorious as the Cathedral altar scene where Father Stuart made that same offering. After 40 years, this may seem to some to be all that remains of the visible manifestation of my priesthood. It is a miracle in its own right, one that I described on an earlier anniversary of ordination in “Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence.”

In the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

But there is another manifestation of priesthood less visible than my weekly offer of Mass, but just as mysterious and powerful. It has to do with the day on which my 40th anniversary of priesthood falls. It has to do with Pentecost, a Greek term meaning “fiftieth.” In Jewish tradition, it is called “Shavuot,” the Feast of Weeks. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month, Savon, the concluding day of the Omer, the 49 days (seven weeks) from the Passover commanded in Leviticus (23:15-16).

In the Book of Exodus (23:16), it became the Harvest Feast. In Rabbinic legend, it was also the day Yahweh gave the Law — the Torah — to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. It is the second of three annual feasts requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was the reason that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples were in Jerusalem with so many others. A seminary professor once told me that “salvation comes from the Jews. They are our spiritual ancestors, and we must honor them.” I do.

It is because they were Jews that they were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter and closes the Easter season. Technically, it is the day after 49 days (or seven weeks) following the final Passover meal of Jesus and the Apostles, the point through which the Jewish and Christian traditions are intimately connected. It was also the day that Jesus was betrayed, the point at which Salvation History begins its fulfillment. For a deeper understanding of this, see my post, “Satan at the Last Supper, Hours of Darkness and Light.”

In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2), the disciples of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem in one house: then suddenly ...

“A sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, coming to rest upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

— Acts 2: 1-4”

The scene recalls the fiery descent of the Spirit of God at Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:16-19).

As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful sound. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd, each person hearing them speak in his own native tongue. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but some of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).

That day in Catholic understanding is the birth of the Church, and by the time it was only an hour old, its first scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not inherit the wind immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 AM on a major holy day that required a fast. Their pharisaical claim caused Peter, now the leader of the Twelve, into the first papal defense of the Church:

“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day.”

Acts 2:14-15

Inspired by the Spirit, Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God has poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of the Passion of the Christ was unveiled.

It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is “ruah,” and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh.” It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2):

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.”

— Genesis 1:1-2

And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and yet again in a Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)

The Wind of God did just as Jesus predicted it would do to Peter in the Gospel quote that began this post. It bound my hands and took me to a place where I did not wish to go. What am I to make of this? What should I have done while laying face down on the floor before an altar as the Litany of Saints offered me up in priestly sacrifice forty years ago? What would I have done then had a vision of my future life as a priest been before me?

When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.

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