October 1, 2013
This is our first White Mass here in Fort Wayne. It is truly a joy to celebrate this Mass for
our doctors, nurses, and other health care workers today, the feast of one of
the most beloved saints of the Church, Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, the
Little Flower. And I am very grateful to
the newly formed Catholic medical guild here in our diocese, the Dr. Jerome Lejeune
guild. I pray that your mission and
activity will promote the holiness of your members and be a great service to
the Gospel of Life.
God desires holiness for each and every person in each and every walk of
life. Christ pours out His grace upon us
so we can live a holy life. The Second
Vatican Council taught that “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or
status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection
of charity.” Your work in health care,
if carried out with faith and love, if carried out in the Holy Spirit, is a
means to achieve sanctity. We see this
in the lives of doctors who were canonized saints and in the life of Dr. Jerome
Lejeune whom we pray will one day be beatified and canonized.
The Lord calls us to seek holiness within our state of life and within
our professions, in our ordinary work in the midst of the world. It involves making sacrifices for God and for
our neighbors. I think of the many
sacrifices, especially of time, that you who are doctors make for your
patients. But holiness requires more
than your gift of time and your medical talents. It means “identification with Christ” and
becoming part of his work of redemption.
By imitating Jesus, the divine Physician, you are on the path to
holiness. This involves the self-giving
and sacrificial love revealed on the cross.
It involves rejection of selfish ambition. It involves instead “holy ambition”: seeking excellence in your medical practice;
putting God first in your life; and treating every patient, from the tiniest
embryo at the beginning of his or her life to the frail elderly person at the
end of life, with the love they deserve as beloved children of God.
Saint Therese, a beautiful young woman, was a saint of simplicity and
love who shows all of us the path of holiness at the most important school we
could ever attend, the school of the Gospel.
She discovered that her vocation as a Carmelite nun was to be love
itself in the heart of the Church. She
shows us “the little way” of children who confide in God the Father with “bold
trust.” The heart of her message, her
spiritual attitude, is an example for all of us. She invites you and me to live in the heart
of the Church as disciples and ardent witnesses of Christ’s love and
mercy. The “little way” of Saint Therese
teaches us the importance of making every action, no matter how seemingly
inconsequential, one done in love. Every
visit you make to a patient is an opportunity to take a step on the path of
holiness by your words, your attentiveness, your compassion. We shouldn’t equate holiness with great
outward deeds, though some may be called to those, but instead, as Mother
Teresa once said, little deeds done with great love. Your treating every patient as Jesus, seeing
Him in the sick and the suffering, is paramount for your growth in
holiness. Your doing your work with love
and devotion, as well as professional diligence and care, is necessary. I think of the nurse who loves his or her
work and truly cares for his or her patients.
The nurse who wants to help each and every one of them in their
particular situation. If the nurse did
his or her work tasks with little effort and half-heartedly, being sloppy about
dispensing medicine or not careful in following the doctors instructions, would
such actions reflect a soul that wants to glorify God in all things? Of course not. A holy nurse and a holy doctor desires to do every
task to the best of his or her abilities.
Holiness does not consist only of our prayer life, essential as that is.
It consists in
the totality of our lives. It means
fighting lukewarmness, both in our prayer and in our work. We must not be careless in our prayer life or
in our professional life. I invite you
to see your medical work as a way to heaven.
Offer your work to God every morning.
See everything you do as a holy act, as an opportunity to give glory to
God. And never allow your faith to be
compromised by participating in so-called health services that are immoral,
even if promoted by some who have bought into the growing culture of death in
our society. Be apostles of life and
witnesses to the sanctity of human life.
Maybe you’ll experience rejection by colleagues for refusing to
prescribe contraception, perform sterilizations, or participate in
abortions. The Christian on the path to
holiness cares more about faithfulness to God’s commands than the affirmation
and praise of the world. Just think of
the example of Dr. Jerome Lejeune.
Today’s Gospel is a gem of spiritual wisdom. When the disciples asked Jesus: “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of
heaven?”, our Lord placed a child in their midst and said: “Amen, I say to you,
unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of
heaven. Whoever humbles himself like
this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.” Is this not the greatness of Saint Therese,
the Little Flower? Her “little way of
trust and love” was the way of spiritual childhood. She abandoned herself like a child into God’s
hands, with a trust that was inseparable from the strong and radical commitment
of true love. She lived the greatest
love in the smallest things of daily life, thus bringing to fulfillment her
vocation to be Love in the heart of the Church.
Therese died (at the age of 24) on the evening of September 30, 1897,
saying the simple words, ‘My God, I love you!’ looking at the Crucifix she held
tightly in her hands.
The center of our life and the life of every Catholic community is the
Sacrament of Divine Love that we now celebrate, the Holy Eucharist. “In her last Letter, on an image that
represents the Child Jesus in the consecrated Host, Saint Therese wrote these simple
words: “I cannot fear a God who made
himself so small for me!. . . I love him!
In fact, he is nothing but Love and Mercy!” The Blessed Sacrament, the sacrament of
charity, is Jesus’ gift of Himself to us, the sacrament that makes present his
love for us to the end, the offering of his own Body and Blood. My brothers and sisters, we draw our life
from the Eucharist. Truly blessed are
those called to the supper of the Lamb!
May the Lord Jesus strengthen you and all who serve in the medical
profession. May you bear witness, like
Saint Therese, the Little Flower, to the love of Christ, the love that urges us
on in our journey to the Kingdom!