Homily of Cardinal Egan on Commemoration of Beatification of
Blessed
James Alberione
(St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, November
30, 2003)
My dear friends in the Lord,
One of the greatest blessings at St. Patrick's Cathedral is
the number of celebrations
we have throughout the year for various special events. For
example, we have celebrations for virtually all the ethnic
groups here in New York — the Irish and the Italians, the
Polish,
the Germans and the Haitians. We actually have 18 different
celebrations here each year for
the Hispanic community. I have mass this afternoon at 2
o'clock for the community from
Nicaragua. So this is one of the great blessings we have here.
These celebrations are for all
the wonderful people that make up the community of New York.
Then we have celebrations for all kinds of civic organizations
— the working men
and women on Labor Day, the police officers, the firefighters
and the health care
professionals Sunday after Sunday. They come here to celebrate
and we are honored and delighted to welcome them.
We have celebrations for religious institutions and
organizations, colleges and universities, the Order of Malta,
the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Daughters of America. We
celebrate these and so many others, but none of these
celebrations are as
welcomed as when we celebrate a community of religious women
and men as we do here this morning — The Pauline Family — a
community of women and men who give great
witness to the world for Jesus Christ.
Today this celebration certainly has a message for the Pauline
Family. We tell them we love them. We congratulate them, we
celebrate with them the beatification of their Founder. They
call him Blessed James Alberione. I lived in Italy for almost
23 years of my
life. We Italians call him Don Alberione and I suspect I am
going to slip a number of times
and say that. It just doesn't sound right to say James for
some reason or another. He is
Giacomo to me. In any case
he has a great story for all of us. And I would like to tell
it to you briefly
because I believe the lives of the Blesseds and the Saints are
great messages of
holiness for all of us.
James — Don Giacomo Alberione — was born in 1884 in northern
Italy, a little part
of that great country called Cuneo, not too far from Turin. He
was born of a very poor family of peasant farmers. It was a large family. He went to the local
seminary and in 1900
there was the change of
the centuries just like we had three years ago here. In this
wonderful cathedral
of ours we celebrated that new century. We celebrated it the
way that John Paul II, our Holy Father told us to
celebrate it. In 1900 the Holy Father was Leo XIII
and young James Alberione
celebrated the opening of the new century kneeling before the
Blessed Sacrament
and feeling a call to follow St. Paul and announce Jesus
Christ to the world
in a 20th
century fashion with all the great communications that were
coming
forward.
He committed himself to this. He likes to say this inspiration
came from the Eucharist
and that all the religious communities he founded came from
the Eucharist — that encounter
with Jesus Christ there at the turn of the last century. He
was ordained. Shortly thereafter
he became the spiritual
director at the seminary and the editor of the local diocesan
newspaper called the Gazzetta d'Alba — the city was
Alba in northern
Italy. Pretty soon he founded an order of priests with the
commitment he had to announce the gospel through the
press, through films, through television as the years went on,
through newspapers, through
every modern means of communication. Out of this came the
Pious Society of St. Paul, priests and brothers for the
apostolate of the Good Press; the Daughters of St. Paul;
the Pious Disciples of the
Divine Master; Sisters of Jesus the Good Shepherd; the
Apostoline Sisters and any
number of groups of laity who form themselves in every corner
of the world into
the Pauline Family.
Their purpose is to announce Jesus Christ in the style of the
20th century with
everything that was new and powerful. Before long, Don
Alberione had over 10,000 priests, brothers, sisters and dedicated laity. Films, bookstores,
printing presses, film
studios, radio stations,
television stations, film production — every means of social
communications and
every means of mass media — was to be his and his Family's
interest
and
commitment.
Now when you hear all of this you probably imagine that this
was a big powerful
fellow, with a huge personality who is out trumpeting his
achievements and impressing the
world. He was just the opposite. He was a very quiet fellow,
very private and very humble, very self-effacing, small in
stature, and anxious not to stand out. But he had a
secret — and the secret
was prayer. Prayer — a life of prayer and prayer above all
before his Eucharistic Lord. It was there that his
inspirations as a very young man had its beginning. And it was
from there that he derived — dare I say it? — his power,
spiritual
power
across the world.
This man knew the Orient, Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, South
and Central America. He had incredible and still has
incredible establishments in every
corner of the world. But this quiet holy priest looked for no
attention but to just announce Jesus Christ with the most
modern of means. He died on November 26, 1971 at the young
age of 87. And this year, April 27th, Pope John
Paul II named him Blessed. Thus our mass today is a
celebration of the Beatification of Don Alberione, of Father
James Alberione if
you wish.
It is an occasion for us to congratulate the Pauline Family.
It is an occasion for us to beg their Founder to keep them
close to the Lord and to increase their work, especially to
increase vocations. And if you have any doubt about the wisdom
of Don Alberione, when
he decided to come to the United States, what city did he
choose? Of course, he chose New
York — the communications capital of this nation and according
to John Paul II, the capital
of the world.
He came here and so we have Alba House in Manhattan, the Bronx
and Staten Island. Incidentally I have been in every one of
those facilities. We have the Daughters' wonderful facilities
and bookstores here in Manhattan and on Staten Island. We have
the
Sister Disciples on Staten Island. Again I have been to all of
these because I am hoping that
maybe some of the goodness and the holiness of this Pauline
Family will rub off on me.
My dear friends, all are called to proclaim the Gospel. St.
Paul, who was the
inspiration of Blessed Alberione, told us in Second
Corinthians that we are to be ambassadors for Christ,
not one or two of us, not just Paul, not just Timothy and
Paul, but everyone who glories in being part of the Body of
Christ. It is to be an envoy of the Lord
to the world and an
ambassador.
As soon as you and I hear this, our first reaction is "Oh
great, I'm to be an envoy and
an ambassador to the world on behalf of Jesus Christ? I have
all I can do to keep the house
together, or to keep my job or to struggle through life."
Our first reading today was from Jeremiah. In the first
chapter of Jeremiah we have
one of the most famous statements in all of scripture. This is
the Old Testament prophet
Jeremiah. The Lord told him he was anointing him and sending
him forth to be a prophet and an ambassador and an envoy.
Jeremiah said, "Uh-uh, Lord, I am nothing but a child. I
don't even know how to speak." The Lord said, "I'll put the
words in your mouth. Get to
it!"
And he is saying that to every ambassador of Jesus Christ. You
can speak in a thousand ways. You can tell your friends, your
acquaintances, your co-workers what you
believe and why. You can tell them that you are committed to
Jesus Christ and what this
means to you and what it has achieved in your life. No "uh-uh,
Lord, I am a child and
cannot speak," but rather "I believe in Jesus Christ as my
Lord and Savior. I announce him
in words and I announce him in actions." My dear friends, if
we could only get a hold of
that last.
If you and I were to leave this packed cathedral this morning
and go out in the world and live as women and men who are
committed to justice in season and out of season, who
never damage the rights of another, who never take away the
good name of another, who
are fiercely just, who would be men and women of unconditioned
compassion, then every
human being who crosses our path would be seen as an image of
God for whom God has died.
Anyone who is hurting could trust that we would hurt as well
and come to his or her
assistance.
If we went out of this cathedral this morning, not only just
and compassionate, but
also as women and men of honor to speak the truth in and out
of season and never counted the cost, as women and men whose
hearts are clean no matter how unclean the world may
seem to be, then you and I would be ambassadors of Jesus
Christ. Indeed it would be God
speaking in us. Everyone — not just the priests, brothers,
sisters or lay associates of the
Pauline Family — but each
and every one of us has been called to be a Don Alberione.
In our Gospel this morning the Lord tells us to be vigilant.
There are many things
about which we can be vigilant. One might be the opportunities
that come into our lives to
tell the world of Jesus Christ in words and to tell the world
of Jesus Christ by living Jesus Christ — that's being an
ambassador! If Blessed Giacomo James Alberione has any
message for us this morning I suspect it is to tell the world
of the Lord and do it in the most
modern effective way you can just as I have taught thousands
and thousands to do it.
Let me end this way. I told you that I lived a good part of my
life in Italy — almost
23 years. I was ordained by Archbishop Martin J. O'Connor who
was the rector of the
Pontifical North American College and shortly after ordination
I went back and I taught in
the seminary under Archbishop Martin J. O'Connor. Just before
the beginning of the Second
Vatican Council the world and especially the Catholic world
was becoming aware of the importance of the media of social
communications. And so it was decided that the first document
of the Second Vatican Council would be a document telling us
to be ambassadors
of Jesus Christ to the world in the most modern and up-to-date
method possible. The
first document of the Second Vatican Council was really to be
the message of
Blessed Alberione. The man who wrote that first message, that
first document, was
Archbishop Martin O'Connor. He was the head of the committee.
I lived with him for nine years. He was very aware of the
achievements of the Pauline Family. The achievements of
the Pauline Family were in
many ways the model of the first document of the Second
Vatican Council that had
the Latin word Inter Mirifica.
So that is the first brush I had with the Pauline Family. The
second is this: from 1972
- 1985 I used to attend to a lovely Italian
parish on weekends in Rome. Every Sunday we distributed the publications of the Pauline Fathers and Pauline
Sisters — Famiglia Cristiana
and so many others. I used to tell them it is only 100 lire or
16 cents for the best magazine in Italy. All the sisters are
smiling and so are the fathers. I was a very good advertisement
for you at a big parish. I knew the good it did for all of us.
Pauline fathers, sisters and brothers know how to address every
segment of society — housewife, the laboring man,
the high school student and
all of their publications were used by me when I was in charge
of the parish.
Shortly after the tragedy of 9-11 here in New York, I was down
in lower Manhattan
to bless a new bookstore — a new bookstore that had been open
with the greatest of promise before the tragedy, before the
crime of 9-11 — but it has had to face a lot of difficulties in
that very distressed part of our city. Nonetheless with Blessed
Alberione
showing the way I say to the priests and the brothers and the
sisters and the lay associates
—
hang in there as ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Never say for one
minute "uh-uh, I
cannot
speak" but rather be ever vigilant as to when to speak and what
to say.
We congratulate them, we thank them, this Pauline Family, for
coming here this
morning and we beg the Lord that their presence will remind each
and every one of us that
when we leave this cathedral today we are ambassadors of Jesus
Christ. O Blessed Alberione make us worthy ambassadors as you
were.
Cardinal Egan
What Took Place
Some highlights of the event are as follows
-The bulletin read:
We welcome to the 10:15 Mass the members of the religious
congregation of the Pauline Family, their friends and
benefactors as they celebrate the recent beatification of their
founder Blessed James Alberione.
- four busses picked up attendees at the Society of St. Paul on
Staten Island.
- over 600 people attended the Mass and about 450 attended the
reception.
- everyone received a scarf from Rome to wear during the Mass -
so we stood out!
- Sr Anne Joan cantered for the Mass
- The FSP choir sang in the choir loft.
- The Society of St. Paul con-celebrated with Cardinal Egan
- The Cathedral reserved the seats front and middle for us.
- Members of the Pauline Family proclaimed the readings
- The reception was a dinner held at the Cathedral Hall
- People attended from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia,
Virginia and Boston.
- The Cardinal joined us for a few minutes at the reception
- The reception went until 3 P.M.
Programmi
