Resurrecting Chicago

Monk’s Motto. Ora et Labora. (Prayer and Work.)

Brother Lawrence was a simple member of his order. His calling was to serve his fellow monks by working in the kitchen, the garden and performing other menial duties.

However, Brother Lawrence was awkward and distracted in his work. (Something like you and me, if we were to be honest about it.) The other monks had to be patient with his bungling, saint or not. 

His fellow monks knew that he lived in the awareness of God’s presence. But Brother Lawrence was unaware of a lot of other things.

If it weren’t for his superiors, he never would have written down how he found the secret of remembering the presence of God. He felt he was simple and was just glad to contribute to community life as he was able while he thought of God always. His superiors made him write down how he lived in God’s presence while he worked.,

In my first year of religious life, I was expected to join my brothers for a holy hour, “meditation” we called it. We gathered in the chapel and the leader of prayer for the day, one of the seminarians, said “Let us place ourselves in the presence of God and adore and venerate Him profoundly.” A significant period of silence followed.

Then each fifteen minutes (45 minutes total) a scripture or meditative point was read. At the end of our holy hour, the leader said: “Let us take our resolutions.” Somehow we were expected to do something new as the result of our meditation.  We closed our holy hour meditating on thanksgiving to God: “Let us thank Him for all the graces that we have received,” another reminder of the presence of God.

From day one in the seminary, I was taught to practice the presence of God everyday and to always begin my day remembering his presence. That practice, I learned, was something that should begin to flow through my whole day.  This simple thing is the key to prayer: Remember God is present. 

When you pray the first thing you should remember is that you are conversing with someone. The Someone is God Himself.  Often our prayers are fervent but without awareness of His presence, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking so much. 

Remembering the presence of God is listening to Him. That is the beginning and end of prayer. Read the little book of Brother Lawrence.

“Be still and know that I am God.” (Ps 46:10)

( US Catholic News Service.)

He’s a Southerner accustomed to heat, humidity, grits, and  iced sweet tea.  He will have to face Italian beef sandwiches  and “Chicago style” hot dogs. Fresh corn on the cob. No grits or greens, either. Iced tea, but it’s not sweet. In the Midwest, better stay with coffee, hot or iced.

Bishop Brendan Cahill is the new bishop of Joliet, Illinois, a diocese that covers a mid-state geography from Peoria to Bensenville with a half million Catholics.

It gets very hot in the Summer and frigid here in winter in and around Joliet, Illinois  where the newly appointed bishop will soon take up the reins of a a large part of Illinois.  He’s experienced as a bishop and knows how to pastor and preach. We’ll get used to his drawl.

He has expressed a deep satisfaction in having served up to now as the bishop of Victoria, Texas and he loves rural areas where he finds it easy to relate to those folks.  He should find the same kind of tight-knit rural communities in the Joliet diocese, where small towns abound and family homes are tucked back along old roads that hint at a farming culture that is in steep decline.. 

His offices will be in Joliet but a few minutes outside that city is rural mid-state, Illinois. with plenty of  farmers and small town people but also small urban communities like Morris.

 We are hoping for a pastoral bishop who’ll show up in parishes for important festivals and parochial programs,  The new bishop has to understand that many of his priests are overworked and stressed by ministry.  Where deacons are under-used I hope he encourages pastors to let deacons preach, lead Catholic Communion Services, wedding services and present marriage cases.  They are trained to preach and teach,  So why not use them?

My religious community is called the “Congregation of the Resurrection.” Several of us live and serve in the Joliet Diocese. We look forward to meeting you and serving you as bishop of Joliet.

Welcome, Bishop Cahill to the Joliet diocese with our mid-western folksiness and rapid way of talking and our flat “a.”  “How are-ya?”  Nice to meet-cha?  I’m sure you’ll slip up now and then with “Y’all look happy.”  instead of “You all look happy.” By the way: It’s Jo -liet not Jolly-et. 

We look forward to your ministry here and we ask God’s blessing on the people of our Joliet diocese and on you, Bishop Cahill as you come as our new shepherd.

“Earth at your feet.” (image by author)”He humbled himself …being made in human likeness.”  (Philippians 2:7.)

This morning while I was sitting on my front porch, one of the nuns from the Franciscan convent next door stopped by to visit. She was returning from morning Mass on the memorial of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.  Soon we were discussing the miraculous birth of Mary and her preservation from the blot of darkness into which we all are born because of Original Sin.

We then moved on to the birth of Jesus and reflected on how the Son of God conceived within Mary became a human being.  He humbled Himself and took our form. The Word became flesh.

Sister Ruth asked me to think of the humility of God. She opened my eyes to a clearer vision of God Who is Love itself. Becoming one with us is how John, the Evangelist, comes to describe Jesus.

How have I missed this wonderful insight into the holiness of God? I think it startled me with its abruptness. Sister Ruth simply said: “God is humble.”  What does that even mean?  How can God be humble when, He is…well, God?

Mary, His mother, pondered these things in her heart.  In her humility we see her Son. This is what we are graced with in the gentle humanity of Mary.

I think her complete submission to the call of God’s grace helps us to understand what kind of Love God is.  (What a strange sentence.) He is a humble lover.  He lets Himself be drawn to you and me and loses Himself in you and me. ( Do I even know what I am talking about?)

This emptying of Himself for us is a form of His beauty.  We have to learn to see the disguise of that beauty in Jesus and it’s a test of our spirituality.  Can we find in His humility the vision that allows us to gather the beauty of His love into our hearts?

Mary always leads us to her Son.  We see her teaching Him what love means at age twelve when she and Joseph find Him in the Temple after searching for their lost boy for three days. 

She says “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you. Didn’t you realize that our hearts would be breaking as we sought You?  You must think of us who care for you more than life itself.  Show us that you will comply with what we ask You to do. “And he went down and was obedient to them.”( a paraphrase of Luke 2:51)

“But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” He embraced His humility in the arms of His mother and it was she who taught her son how to love. 

photo by Roberto Lee Cortez

A reader asked me why this blog is called “Resurrecting Chicago.”  She thinks that it seems too narrow of a sightline for what I actually write about. “Your theme is Our Lord’s resurrection, which brings new life to his disciples. Sure. But there’s not much there about Chicago,” she says.

She’s right.  This blog is about resurrecting individuals and society within the culture of American city life. “Chicago” could just as easily be replaced by Pittsburgh, Omaha, Portland or Dallas because it is about what the city stands for. 

 “The Church” is wherever I minister at the time. So “Chicago” means my backyard, where I work, where I minister,  When I started this blog some fifteen years ago I was serving the Church in Chicago.

I use “Chicago” to represent the contemporary world, mostly city life and our post modern culture. 

Chicago stands for  American society. And, resurrecting means rebuilding the center of the Christian life around the Gospel. If I’d started this blog in another season of my life it could have read “Resurrecting Las Vegas” (That would have been a challenge!) or “Lifting up the Ozarks.” 

The cyclist in the middle of it all in the photo accompanying this post, lifts his head  to see the city, any city, where his life plays out. and, he wonders.  He sees and thinks about  where he is and what it all means.

We Resurrectionists hope that people like the cyclist will discover the need of conversion to the message of Our Lord and begin living the new life promised by Him. Conversion, forgiveness, and generosity are the foundation of that new life and that’s where we come in. We preach a clear pathway, a road to travel as a disciple of Jesus in the Church that He founded.

So, when you read “Resurrecting Chicago” just make the adjustment. When you think about where you are right now, remember that Our Lord talked about bringing the world new life.  Your world is fertile ground for that blossoming. It’s your backyard. Whoever said it first was right: “Bloom where you are planted!” Resurrection begins where you find yourself today.

Venerable Paul Smolikowski,C.R.

This month, the Church celebrates the centenary of the death of Venerable Paul Smolikowski, C.R. Father Paul was a Resurrectionist priest who lived his life with great love as he followed the inspiration of our Lord and trusted his entire life to him.  Recently, the Church determined that Father Paul lived the life of Christ to a heroic degree and pronounced him “Venerable.”

  Father Paul’s  faith in Jesus throughout his entire life was personal and profound. His trust in God never wavered even in the most difficult of times.  His love for God and his fellow religious was warm and deep.

He also had a wonderful way of expressing his trust in God. He thought of each day as part of God’s plan for him, a beautiful plan like a musical composition. He lived with awareness of the presence of God. In those moments of life when happiness surprised him, he could hear God’s Voice in the melodies of robins and sparrows singing on a Spring morning. And, he thought kindly of everyone he would meet that day as an image of Our Lord.

He had his tough days, too, when like the first bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony he felt  a sense of impending doom. Father Paul had a few strong, low notes sounded in his life but he always rose to the occasion with grace.

When Father Paul knew that he was going to pass from this life, he turned to one of his friends and said warmly: ” I think that the music of my life is now complete.” He was an old man embracing his passing from this life with complete trust in God just as he had done all of his life.

You are encouraged to pray to Venerable Paul Smolikowski, asking him to intercede for you and your intentions before the throne of God.

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Prayer or the Intercession of Venerable Paul Smolikowski, C.R.

Gracious Father, listen to the prayers we offer you in thanksgiving for the kindness and joy that shone through the life of Father Paul Smolikowski. 

As a member of the Congregation of the Resurrection, Father Paul humbly showed us all the way to heartfelt conversion. He especially touched the lives of young people with the challenge to live for Our Lord Jesus.

Through his intercession I ask … (enter your petition here).  I pray also for the conversion of sinners and the rebirth of society in the image of the Risen Christ Who lives and reigns with you forever. Amen.! Alleluia!

Venerable Paul Smolikowski pray for us!

(To report graces received” Write to father Postulator, Via San Sebastienello 11, 00187, Rome Italy.)

Venerable Paul Smolikowski, C.R. was born in Russia in 1849 to Polish parents and at age eighteen joined the new Congregation of Resurrection in Rome.

Father Paul Smolikowski was a man who followed the psalmist’s command  to make music to God while you live! (Psalm 104:43)

Father Paul Smolikowski, C.R. (circa 1910)

He was an enthusiastic and joyful member of the Congregation of the Resurrection who began his ministry teaching at a residential middle school run by the CRs in Bulgaria, and later was called to Kiev, Ukraine to do similar work. 

Father Paul was gifted with an eager and loving spirit that captivated young people. He was committed to bringing back to the Roman Catholic Church those who had joined the Orthodox Church. He loved teaching the children of the “Uniates,” those families who had left the Orthodox Church to rejoin the Catholic church.

Although Father Paul was a Roman Catholic of the Latin rite he had been ordained a priest in the Eastern Rite, at his request, because he felt called  to work for the union of the Eastern break-away churches and the Roman Catholic Church.

He considered his life as a composition dedicated to God and he lived his life joyfully attending to his duties.  That was his calling.  He heard that call every time a bell rang to announce  a gathering whether for prayer or community meals, or the beginning of another another class.  It was the “Vox Dei:” The “Voice of God” that regulated his life and he always listened for the sound of that music.

In his old age, when he knew that his life on earth was coming to an end, he turned to a brother Resurrectionist and said, “The music of my life is now complete.”

As we celebrate the centenary of his birth into eternal life, we Resurrectionists ask that you pray for the reunion o f the Orthodox with the Roman Catholic Church. 

Intercessory Prayer to Venerable Paul Smolikowski, C.R.

Gracious Father, listen to the prayers we offer you in thanksgiving for the kindness and joy that shone through the life of Father Paul Smolikowski. 

As a member of the Congregation of the Resurrection, Father Paul humbly showed us the way to heartfelt conversion. He especially touched the lives of young people with the challenge to live for Our Lord Jesus as he ministered to eastern rite Catholics.

Through his intercession I ask … (enter your petition here).  I pray also for the conversion of sinners and the rebirth of society in the image of the Risen Christ Who lives and reigns with you forever. Amen.! Alleluia!

Venerable Paul Smolikowski pray for us!

Why the Cross? (Cello5, image by Michal Lech)

We Americans observe a terrible memorial today.  It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City. With visions of people leaping out of the upper floors of those towers as the conflagration raged up the stairwells of the buildings, our memories of that day haunt us these many years later. Too quickly, the images come of thousands of people fleeing through the streets as the acrid black smoke descended on the them.

How are Catholic Christians supposed to relive  this disaster? How could God who is Love have permitted this intentional holocaust?  Couldn’t He have heard the hearts of those who each day pray for peace?

This disaster did not have to happen.  God permitted it to happen.  Why? And, why all the rest of life’s sufferings?”  Why should a young woman beginning a career in medicine lose her life to a car accident in the Spring of her life?  Why a child’s cancer? Why did my life’s partner leave me? Why so often do our hopes drown in loss?

Why does God permit suffering.? It cripples our spirits and brings our bodies to weakness.  Our spirits are horrified.  Where is God in all this?

Archibald MacLeish ‘s poem captures the awful feeling that we have when we consider evil:

“If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God.”*

If God is ultimate love and goodness, then he could have saved us from 9-11, but He didn’t. Some other influence was more powerful than His love. So, if you tell me that God is good, that’s fine.  But unfortunately, He is either not all-good or there’s another power to be dealt with and it is not love.

If God is really all-powerful He could have intervened and 9-11 would not have happened, but it did. Then, God must not be all-good because we have this memory of His absence during disaster.

Why do good people suffer? Logic offers no answer.

Twenty-five years ago today, I was just starting my day at the clinic. The T.V. was on at the desk. A plane hit one of the NYC Towers. It was awful.  Then some minutes later we watched as a second plane crashed into the other tower. I remember distinctly the moment I realized that the incidents were deliberate.   That increased the horror.

When Jesus the Christ felt the heavy wooden beam cut into his shoulder, when they spit at Him, mocked Him and impaled Him on His cross, what was He to think? Jesus own words echo in my heart today:  “Father, why have you abandoned me?” His voice thrust that first word out into the silent universe: “Abba!”

The darkness imposed by death and the tug of suffering felt in us leave us stunned and horrified. Our only hope is hope of resurrection. That hope is a tiny whispering sound deep in our souls that says: “Trust me!”

*MacLeish, Archibald. From “J.B., a Play in Verse.“

Seminarian Paul Smolikowski,, circa 1871.

 This month the Congregation of the Resurrection honors the memory of a remarkable priest and Resurrectionist. Father Paul Smolikowski was a Resurrectionist priest whose life spanned the end of the nineteenth  century and the beginning of the twentieth.

Father Paul’s devotion to Christ and the Church is legendary.  Recently, he has been honored by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a Vatican office which investigates the claims of those who advocate for Christians who have lived holy lives. That Congregation has determined after detailed investigation that Father Paul lived a life of joyful heroic virtue.  He has been listed among the “Servants of God” and can now be called “Venerable.”

In 1867, Paul Smolikowski  was 18 years old  and intending to become a Jesuit until he met the small group of Resurrectionists who were teaching at his seminary in Rome. He loved the idea of joining a new Congregation like the Resurrectionists because he felt the fire of God’s love kindled in the hearts of those dedicated priests and brothers. He felt that same enthusiasm in his own heart and was thrilled to join them in their proclamation of the hope of the Resurrection. 

He loved the vibrant men who taught him, especially one of the founders of the Resurrectionists who was still living: Father Peter Semenenko.  Paul learned the depth and the power of this new religious community from this man.

Some forty years before, Father Peter with several others had banded together to form a new movement in the Church. It’s purpose was to bring fresh hope to Church parishes. With the celebration of the Holy Eucharist as the center of the social life of parishes, the founding group intended to create associations and groups which would live the Gospel of Jesus in their daily lives. They called themselves “The Brothers of the Resurrection.”

 Paul saw in Father Peter Semenenko, C.R.  something of the fiery urgency of the Gospel which burned in his own heart.  Bright, and deeply spiritual, the old founder’s humility and theology made a deep impression on the young Paul and he made a decision to join this new community.

Thanks to men like Venerable Paul Smolikowski, C.R. the mission of  the Resurrectionists continues today in more than a dozen countries, including the latest, Tanzania in Africa.

We ask you to pray for vocations to the Resurrectionist Community so that many young men will see in our life and work, a sign of their own vocation. May Our Lady, Mother of Graces, inspire many young men to give their hearts in devotion to the Church, as Venerable Paul did when he eagerly answered God’s call.

This morning, I was reading “The Christian Century,” a protestant journal. The cover of the September 2026 issue depicts Christ Pantocreator because the “Feast of Creation in Christ,” is observed by some liturgical churches on September first. This was a decision of the World Council of Churches which is on a mission to make us Christians aware of our responsibility to value all that God has made, the vast universe of his creation.

The official date is September 1.  I checked the Catholic  “Ordo,” the guide that priests use to observe liturgical feasts and memorials. Although we Catholics have not yet embraced this feast officially, we are reminded in our guide for today that Pope Francis was all for this kind of a celebration. There’s  a note in the Ordo meant for the preparation for today’s Mass. 

In fact at Castel Gondolfo, Our Holy Father, Pope Leo celebrated the Mass of Creation on September 1 and stressed the beauty of creation and our responsibility to it. In his homily he reminds us to take to heart the words of Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudate Si.”

In the spirit of the old idea of celebration as continuing a whole week, I invite you to take seriously this new awareness of the sanctity of creation to freshen-up  September-time. 

It seems to me that we can show our  respect for the Lord’s creation by doing little things that – if everyone observed them – would help us revere what the Creator has supplied for our own wellbeing.  Yes, I know we are not the only living things here, but we are the conservers of our world.  So, I’m suggesting the following:

Conserve Water!  Don’t run the water from your faucet as if there is an infinite supply of it out there. Brush your teeth but turn off the tap while you do it. At the kitchen sink, don’t let fresh water pour out of the faucet and down the drain needlessly.  I think life is pretty-much a daily affair and made up of small things. Remember the countries with limited sources of water. Act like they do to use each drop of water with gratitude.

Salvage trash, carefully dispose of refuse and don’t litter the world with garbage! 

Pray for good stewardship of food.  Do not waste His bounty.

Feed the birds!

These are just a few practices that I thought of.  You can find many of your own opportunities each day to find ways to conserve creation.

Just look over your own life and how you relate to the rest of creation.  Choose one or two things where you can show more reverence to what the creator has provided. 

Put your phone away and pause to thank God for what you see and hear and experience each day.

The Great Books (Wikepedia illust.)

Sauntering through a local flea market with a friend, I noticed, for sale, a few books from a collection of volumes called “The Great Books of the Western World.” The vendor had one table set-up with some figurines, costume jewelry and four or five random volumes of the set of fifty-four published in 1952.

I’d wanted the set for years, but the cost had been prohibitive.

“Do you have any more from this set?” I asked the guy selling.

“Yeah, the rest are in the trunk of my car. I got ’em all!”

“There are fifty-four volumes to the set,” I said.

“They’re all there. I’ll take fifteen dollars for the whole thing,” he said.

“Sold!” yelled my friend immediately.

I brought the set home and arranged them in my bookcase: Fifty-four volumes of   works by classic Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, etc.), Cervantes, Hugo, Jane Austen, Freud –to name a few– and St. Augustine’s “Confessions,” his famous auto-biography. 

I read that book and a few other from the set.  For the next 25 years I lugged them from one pastoral site to the next. Just having them there made me feel content. Most of the volumes remained unread but I studied St. Augustine’s “Confessions” and it’s one of the greatest books that I have ever read. Nothing compares to it.

Bishop Augustine, showing compassion. (Wikipedia photo)

Augustine leads the reader through his search for God in his experiences from infancy to adulthood.  He meditates on the vastness of the exterior universe seeking evidence of a supreme being but he also seeks God in his own soul.  He finds in his heart an endless interior depth which he says was opened to him by an incomprehensible  light.  It was not the light of day but an interior experience which revealed to him what he had long been searching for.  He found, then, that there was an inexhaustible light which he reckoned with as God.

Still he couldn’t encounter this light fully until he discovered through revelation, Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man.

Then he speaks directly to God: “Late have I loved you., O Beauty ever ancient, ever new… You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.”

I wonder at the God Who arranged for me to find the writings of His witness, St. Augustine, in a open-air stall on a sunny day in Las Vegas where I was serving the Church. Each day, I expect to experience Divine Light. I’m still searching, still seeking His presence. Sometimes, He flashes in me.

You, too, might find the Divine Presence that you seek in some obscure place.   St. Augustine teaches us to never, never, give up that search.