Love for the Church (St. Pius X)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Many years ago, Cardinal Sin of Manila—may he rest in peace—told a story of how he needed $50,000 to do some repairs in his seminary in Manila.

When he was on a trip to Rome, he decided to do a novena to St. Pius X. Every day at a certain time, he went there and knelt in front of the tomb of St. Pius X in St. Peter’s Basilica.

On about the third or fourth day, a man came to him and said, “Are you Cardinal Sin?” And he said, “Yes.”

And he said, “I’d like to invite you to lunch.” He accepted the invitation. And over lunch, he found this man was an executive in the Fiat Corporation.

He explained to the Cardinal that he and his wife had jobs, they were busy people, and they had one son, and recently it was the seventh birthday of their son.

They asked the son, “What would you like for your birthday?” And the fellow said, “I would like that you and mum stay home from work and that we all go to Mass together.”

He said, “My wife and I were very surprised at this. We expected him to ask for a bicycle or a special toy car or all sorts of gadgets or something. But he asked for something spiritual. And we began to wonder, where did he learn such things?—because we haven’t been teaching him such things. We began to examine our conscience, and we realized that we’ve both been very involved in our work. We perhaps have not been spending as much time with him as we should. We certainly haven’t been teaching him these values. We began to wonder, ‘Who has been teaching him these values?’”

They had a Filipina household manager and they realized that she was the one who was teaching these very good values to their son. They were extremely grateful.

He said, “I decided when I saw you that I wanted to show my gratitude in some way to the Church in the Philippines for having this effect in my family through this very good girl that we’ve employed. And I was wondering if you had any project that you might need some help with.”

The Cardinal very readily explained that he was doing a novena to St. Pius X, asking for $50,000 for some repair work that he needed for his seminary. The man took out his checkbook and he wrote a check for $50,000.

And the Cardinal, who had a great sense of humor, said, “When I saw the ease and the speed with which he wrote a check for $50,000, I told him, ‘And that’s just my first project.’”

This is a meditation about St. Pius X. It is a feast day we celebrate on the 21st of August.

He excelled in continuous service to the Church, firstly as a parish priest, then as Archbishop of Venice, and finally as the Roman Pontiff.

He put great effort into keeping the faith pure from doctrinal error. He reformed the sacred liturgy and promoted the custom of frequent reception of Holy Communion, especially for young children.

The motto that he chose for his Pontificate in Latin was, Instaurare omnia in Christo—“To restore all things in Christ.” He died in August 1914.

The Entrance Antiphon for this feast says, “The Lord sealed a covenant of peace with him, and made him a prince, bestowing the priestly dignity upon him forever” (cf. Sir. 45:30).

The years of the Pontificate of Pius X were particularly difficult. There were a lot of internal upheavals and transformations in many nations.

These had a consequent serious impact on the Christian faithful. There were what somebody called gale force winds tearing through the Church at that time, of an ideological and doctrinal nature, many a fruit of the wrong ideas that had circulated in the 17th, 18^th^, and 19th centuries.

Pope Pius X faced up to these errors.

“Simon Peter spoke up and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus replied, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, you are a blessed man, because it was no human agency that revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. Now I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:16-19).

Peter has the power of the keys. Peter is guided by the Holy Spirit. One of the most important truths of our faith is that the Holy Father is guided by the Holy Spirit.

If that wasn’t the case, then the Church would just be a human organization, not worth believing in. But because we believe God is with His Church, the Holy Spirit is guiding the Pope and the bishops in every move, especially when he speaks on faith and morals. That’s worthy of our humble belief.

We can have a great faith in Peter. Part of our Christian spirit is to have a great love for Peter, to pray for Peter. Peter is the rock (cf. Matt. 16:18) to emphasize to us the importance of being close to Peter, the source of truth, of beauty, of love. We have an awful lot to be proud of in our Church.

At the time of the Pontificate of Pope Pius X, the attempts to reconcile the faith with a philosophy whose principles were diametrically opposed to it brought numerous widely- diffused errors. These ideologies attacked the very foundations of Catholic doctrine and led directly to its denial.

Hence his choice of motto: “to restore all things in Christ.” He wanted to stem the tide of the many evils that threatened the faithful.

He frequently insisted on the damage ignorance of the faith produces. St. Teresa of Calcutta used to say, “The greatest poverty is ignorance.”

One of the spiritual works of mercy is to instruct the ignorant. Pope Pius used to say that “it is useless to expect a person without formation to fulfill his Christian duties” (Pius X, Encyclical, Acerbo nimis, Point 6, April 15, 1905). Time and again he pointed out the need to teach catechism.

We could think for a moment about the importance of young children learning the catechism. You see, children pick up in the catechism ideas, truths, that they might otherwise take a lifetime to discern: the indissolubility of marriage, the sacredness of human life.

If the temporal reality in the world is the very opposite of these truths, and every time they look around them they find something completely alien to these truths, they might never discover them.

When we teach catechism, we open their minds, their hearts, and their souls to the eternal truths that are beautiful, that are the pathway to God.

Often we might think that the place where children learn catechism is in school or in the parish. But the primary place the Second Vatican Council teaches us that children have to be formed and educated is in the home. It’s very good to check with your growing children that they know very clearly the basic truths of our faith.

A number of years ago I was talking to a six-year-old kid. It was the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, and so I asked the child, who came from an excellent Catholic family, how many persons there were in the Blessed Trinity. And this fellow very confidently said, ‘Four.’

I was curious and asked him, ‘So who were the four?’ And he said, ‘Francisca, Jacinta, Lucia, and Mother Teresa.’

That brought home to me the importance of young children knowing the basic aspects of their faith from a very young age.

From the uneasiness of Pius X concerning the lack of Christian formation, he produced the Catechism of St. Pius X, which has done an awful lot of good in the Church.

After the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Ratzinger and John Paul II produced what we know as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a marvelous body of truths, something we should be trying to get through little by little.

If you haven’t read the chapters on marriage and the family, apart from all the other wonderful chapters, it’s a particularly relevant chapter to read and to read again and to know well, to get those ideas in very clearly, so that we can also transmit those ideas.

Pius X had a vehement desire to give doctrine in a world that was starving for the want of it. This is reflected throughout his entire magisterium.

You see that the concerns that he had at that particular time are very similar to the sort of concerns we have today in the pagan environment that is sweeping across the world. Even as Pope, he didn’t want to abandon the teaching of the Catechism, the traditional means of disseminating good doctrine, which ultimately is a series of good ideas; wonderful, true ideas on which to build your life.

Until 1911, he often taught the Catechism in one of the courts there in the courtyards of the Vatican. Some days he used to invite some of the faithful from the Roman parish to celebrate Mass with him.

Many of the ideas that he fought very strongly against are uncritically accepted in our own day. In countries evangelized almost twenty centuries ago, great numbers of people are ignorant of the most elementary truths of the faith.

We have to try and make sure that our own country doesn’t fall into that category. We need to keep alight that burning candle of catechism, of truth, and of faith in many hearts.

John Paul II, in a wonderful document in 1988 called, in Latin, Christifideles laici [Christ’s Faithful Laity], said, “Many are defenseless and with the complicity of their own passions allow themselves to be taken in by the erroneous opinions of a few” (cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles laici, Point 34, December 30, 1988).

Somebody once said that there were three powerful modeling mediums in the old world: the family, the Church, and the school. And now there’s a fourth, which is the media.

Sometimes the media can seem stronger than all the other powerful modeling mediums that there are. I happen to mention this at a class once and a grandfather stood up and said, “Father, I’d like to disagree with you. OK, the media is very strong. But I’ve found in my life, when I was educating my children and bringing them up, I taught them to be very careful with the television, careful with what they read. I gave them certain criteria, how to handle the media. And now my children are married and they have their own children. I find that they’re passing on to their children the criteria and the ideas that I taught them about how to handle the media. My point is that the media may seem very strong, but we are stronger.”

The family as a modeling medium is stronger than all the other mediums. If we use it well, we plant those clear ideas that our children identify as valuable and timeless, and pass on to their children.

The call of Pius X to conserve and spread good doctrine is still a fully current and vital issue. In whatever way possible, it’s especially urgent to make known the teachings of the Church on the meaning of life, on the end of man and his eternal destiny, the immortality of the soul, on marriage, on openness to life, on generosity and faith in the number of children, on the right and duty of parents to choose the education their children receive., on the incredible ideas of the social doctrine of the Church—powerful ideas to change society—on love for the Pope and his teachings, and on the evil of abortion.

It is tremendously relevant to spread ideas in season and out of season on all of these issues. We should try and do all that we can.

John Paul II in his Encyclical Redemptoris missio–“The Mission of the Redeemer,” said, “Faith is strengthened by sharing it” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris missio, Point 2, December 7, 1990).

The more we share our faith, the stronger in faith we become. The family catechism, the spreading of good books, daily conversations concerning faith and morals—all these are great ideas and great moments to share in all the opportunities that the Holy Spirit may give us. It is for this that we are.

When we look at the life of Pope Pius X, we see that he loved and served the Church with great fidelity. We could ask God for the grace to help us to grow in our love for the Church.

The Church is our mother. Possibly by the grace of God, we’ve been born in the womb of the Church and educated there, or we’ve been brought into the womb of the Church by a special grace. Love for the Church and love for the Pope is part of our DNA.

We can be very proud of our Church, as I heard a speaker saying once at a pro-life conference. It was a rather interesting phrase; I had never heard that before.

She said, “Our Church is the number one health care worker in the world. Our Church has defended the sacredness of human life in the last fifty years, the only institution on the planet to do so.”

Unfortunately, all the other churches have bent. You have an awful lot to be proud of: the great work of education that our Church has done.

Most countries in Asia have a 5 percent Catholic population, with the exception of the Philippines and Vietnam. But in those countries where there’s a 5 percent population, nearly all the best schools and hospitals are run by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church enjoys enormous prestige.

In some countries, all of the social services of the country are run by the Catholic Church.

And in all countries of a Catholic tradition, even if they have a great educational and health care system at the moment, one hundred years ago all of that was started by institutions of the Catholic Church. They enjoy great prestige. So, we have much to be proud of and to be grateful for.

[One-fourth] of AIDS patients in the world today are cared for in Catholic institutions. There’s a lot of things we don’t know of what our Church has been doing in the past hundred years.

It’s very good to realize how much we have received from the Church. In terms of education, and not just education but standards of education, standards of health care, in culture, in our spiritual formation, in ideas about the purpose and meaning of our existence, about Christian ideals, which are the greatest ideals anybody could have on the planet, about the truth, beauty, and meaning of human love, of marriage, of the family, of the meaning of service that stayed for us and the lives of so many people who went before us.

These are all sorts of helps that lead us to live our Christian vocation to the full and produce fruit that will last, the purpose of our life.

When we come to realize all that we have received, that begs the question: ‘What have I given?’

There’s a phrase from the Psalms that says, “What shall I give back to God for all that he has given to me?” (Ps. 116:12).

We could rephrase that and say, ‘What have I given back to the Church for all the Church has given to me?’

And by “the Church,” we could mean our parish, we could mean an outstation upcountry that we could try to support and build more, we could mean the universal Church. How have I contributed to the spirit of doctrine and truth and love in the world? How have I built up my domestic Church, my family, to hopefully be a seedbed of vocations, corresponding well to the call to holiness and apostolate, the basic calls of the Christian vocation?

Or to live out what Pope Francis called in a recent document “our baptismal priesthood,” which is the priesthood of every baptized person (Pope Francis, General Audience, June 26, 2013).

A priest is somebody who offers sacrifices. Christ offered sacrifices; that’s why He was the Eternal High Priest. He most offered the sacrifices on the Cross. On the Cross, He lives the priestly virtues, humility, obedience, generosity, service, charity.

Pope Francis, by our baptismal priesthood, he means our calling to stand beside the Cross, or to carry the cross in all sorts of moments, or to defend our Church or help it in all sorts of ways.

From the beginning of the Pontificate of Pope Pius X he effected a series of far-reaching reforms. He gave special attention to priests, from whom he expected everything.

He often said, in different ways, that the sanctity of the Christian people depends in large measure on the holiness of their priests. On the fifth anniversary of his own ordination, he dedicated an exhortation to all priests, entitled, “On the Kind of Priests the Church Needs.” It’s called Haerent Animo, dated August 4, 1908.

Pope St. John Paul II has done something similar. He issued about four different documents on the priesthood, and in his other encyclicals, he more or less outlined all the ideas with which God wants the Church and the priesthood shaped in the 21st century.

Above all, St. Pius X asked for saintly priests, entirely given to their work for souls.

Many of the problems, needs, and circumstances that were obvious during the eleven years of his Pontificate are still very relevant.

Today we can use it as a good occasion to examine the quality of our love for the Church shown with deeds.

Have I ever stuck out my neck for the Church? Or her doctrine? Or what she stands for—her values, her truth, her beauty, her love?

Have I ever got my head chopped off for the Church? Some people have done so!

In that same document, Christifideles laici, a wonderful document to take and read of John Paul II–”[Christ’s Faithful Laity]”–in the midst of temporal cares, do we have a living consciousness, he said, “of being members of the Church, of a personal, irreplaceable, and non-transferable task entrusted to us for the good of all?”

There’s a phrase in Scripture that says, “If you knew the gift of God…” Si scires donum Dei (John 4:10). If you realized the great gift that God has given to us, the talents, the truths—all of this, God will ask us to account for.

We all have this need to give good doctrine, taking advantage of every occasion, or creating the occasions, helping others to find the way to reconciliation with God through the sacrament of Confession, to pray each day and offer hours of work, well-finished, for the sanctity of priests, to generously help to sustain the Church and good works, to contribute to the spread of the teachings of the Church, principally in matters that refer to social justice, public morality, education, and the family.

In The Way we’re told, “What joy to be able to say, with all the fervor of my soul: I love my Mother, the Holy Church!” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 518).

It’s very important that we don’t just see the Church as the Pope and the bishops and the priests and the nuns. I am the Church. This has been very clear since the Second Vatican Council. We’re all part of the Church. I am responsible for the Church. I need to take the Church on my shoulders and move forward.

Let us also examine our filial love for the Pope, a love which is for all Christians “a delightful passion, since in him we see Christ” (J. Escrivá, In Love with the Church, Point 13).

It’s a very good idea to help your children to grow up knowing who the Pope is and to love the Pope in a very special way.

I was at a celebration of a religious profession, the 60th anniversary of a religious profession last year, and the nun who was celebrating her profession was 76 years old.

She told a story of how, when she was six years old in her primary or kindergarten school, a missionary priest came to speak to these little children, and he asked the children to pray “for the little children in Africa who didn’t know Jesus.”

And this nun said, “I was very moved by that, that there were children in Africa who didn’t know Jesus.”

Now behind the story, there’s also the faith of that missionary priest who comes and talks to little kids, because you might think that children don’t understand anything or nothing goes in, but the Holy Spirit works.

This nun said, “That was the beginning of my missionary vocation.” She has now been something like fifty years in Africa, but she traces it all back to that missionary priest. She tried to find out who he was later in life, but she wasn’t successful.

But she has a very vivid memory of those moments. The priest asked all the little children to go home to their families and ask their mum if the last decade of the Rosary every night could be “for the little children in Africa who didn’t know Jesus.”

She thought this was a great idea. She went home to her mother of ten children and gave this idea to her mother. And the mother said, “No, the last decade is for the Pope. But it could be the second last decade.” They began to say the second last decade for the little children in Africa who didn’t know Jesus.

In the process, she learned also how important the Pope was. In their family, there was a special decade set aside for the Pope, and this good Catholic mother was bringing up her children with a great awareness of that. Another beautiful story.

We could think of whether every day we remember to pray for the person and the intentions of the Roman Pontiff, so that the Lord may watch over, and strengthen, and sanctify him on earth.

It’s good to be aware that no Pope has it easy. There’s a lot of people uttering very strong things against the Pope, attacking him personally and the doctrines of the Church and everything he does.

But you see, the Pope is not just the spiritual leader of the world, but in many ways he’s the human leader of the world.

Two years ago (August 2018), Pope Francis went to Dublin for the World Meeting of Families. A journalist was describing his arrival and said a few things—perhaps unconsciously exaggerating.

He said that 26,000 journalists—or was it 13,000 journalists? I can’t remember the exact number—had come with the Pope for his two- or three-day visit. I think that’s something like ten jumbos.

Then he said, “[The next] year when President Trump came, there were 4,000.” (In fact, the numbers were likely closer to 1,200 accredited journalists in 2018 for the coverage of the Pope and just a few dozen in 2019.)

Unconsciously, the journalist was saying that while we think the President of the United States is the most important person in the world, but in reality, many people in the journalists say that he’s the leader of the Catholic Church.

There are many things for us to be aware of. Our unity to the Pope is a very wonderful thing. To have that faith in the Holy Spirit, our love for the Church has to lead us to remember that the Church is holy. Holy because she’s the Bride of Christ. She has always been holy.

Sometimes the sins of our members may stain that holiness a little bit, but never take away from the basic holiness that’s there in the Church.

We’re not worried about scandals and all sorts of terrible things that we may hear, because we know that all human beings on earth are capable of the most terrible things.

We can all be weak. We are all full of miseries. But the Church is holy. She’s the Bride of Christ. She has all the graces that we need for all eternity. They were won on Calvary with the Crucifixion, with the Redemption.

We can always be at peace and serene, and have great faith and hope and joy in our Mother the Church, and foster our personal love for the Church in all sorts of ways, and try to help the Church to fulfill her role.

There was a priest in Ireland many years ago who appeared on a very popular talk show. This priest always dressed in clerical attire.

The compere of the show asked him, “You know, I notice you always dress in clerical attire. Why is that?”

He told a rather nice story. He said, “When I was a kid we were playing soccer in the street, and a little old nun came down the street and went into one of the houses where there was an elderly lady there.

“While I was playing soccer I saw this out of the corner of my eye. It registered that that’s Sister so and so and she’s going in to visit Mrs. so and so. And later on, I realized that’s the Church in action. Because that nun was wearing her habit, I witnessed the Church in action. That’s why I always dress in clerical attire.”

The faithful and the non-faithful have a right to always see the witness of the Church in action. And each one of the lay faithful, we, also, in all the ways that we can, have to try and give that example.

This is what the Church is all about. The Church is love. Christ is love. Christianity is love. God is love. We are called to reflect that love in all sorts of ways.

I am the Church. And no matter where I am or what I’m doing 24/7, I have to give that witness because that’s the meaning of my Christian vocation.

We have to try and serve the Church then in the way that the Church wants to be served—in our profession, in our football club, in our golf club, in our bridge club, in our coffee morning club, or all the places where people meet to get together—we have to try and serve the Church in those places.

I heard of an engineering priest once who was a bit of an expert in computers and phones and repairing them and mending them. In the country where he lived, many of the bishops got to hear about him; that he was a bit of a wizard in mending all these things. And of course, every so often, all these things break down.

One by one the bishops used to call him to mend their phone, to mend their laptop, to fix this, to fix that. And he did a great service to all the bishops in helping them in this way. Somebody remarked that he was “serving the Church as she wants to be served.”

Each of us have to find that way to serve the Church.

A Cardinal of the Church once said that the Church’s mission, as the Pope repeats, has always been the same: to proclaim to the world that beauty, happiness, the answer to man’s most profound questions is not an idea, a philosophical system, or a series of teachings, but a person: Jesus Christ, dead and risen for our salvation.

We have to try and unite our friends to the Church and to the Pope, make his person and his teaching attractive.

Pope Benedict, shortly after his election, said, “The Church of today must revive her awareness of the duty to repropose to the world the voice of the One who said, ‘I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he shall possess the light of life’ (John 8:12). The Holy Father, in carrying out his ministry, knows that his task is to make Christ’s light shine out before the men and women of today: not his own light, but the light of Christ” (Benedict XVI, First Message, April 20, 2005).

“The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: it seeks his evangelization through Word and Sacrament, an undertaking that is often heroic in the way it is acted out in history; and it seeks to promote man in the various arenas of life and of human activity” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical, Deus caritas est, Point 19, December 25, 2005).

We’re told in The Forge, “‘And apart from other things,’ quoting St. Paul, ‘there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches’ (2 Cor. 11:28). This sigh of the Apostle is a reminder for all Christians—for you too—of our duty to place at the feet of the Spouse of Christ, of the Holy Church, all that we are and all that we can do; loving her most faithfully, even at the cost of livelihood, of honor, of life itself” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 584).

“Don’t be scared by it,” we’re told in The Forge again. “Insofar as you can, you should fight against the conspiracy of silence they want to muzzle the Church with. Some people stop her voice being heard; others will not let the good example of those who preach with their deeds be seen; others wipe out every trace of good doctrine…and so very many cannot bear to hear her. Don’t be scared, I say again, but don’t get tired, either, of your task of being a loudspeaker for the teachings of the Magisterium.

“Become more Roman day by day. Love that blessed quality, which is the ornament of the children of the one true Church, for Jesus wanted it to be so” (ibid., Points 585-586).

We can ask Our Lady, Mother of the Church, that she might help us in days like today, the Feast of St. Pius X, to grow in that love for the Church and for the Pope, whoever he may be.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF