Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome back to another edition of our diocesan podcast, big city catholics with bishop Robert brennan, the bishop of the diocese of brooklyn and queens, and myself, father Christopher Hennu. Today we'll reflect on some of the recent events happening in Israel. We begin in prayer, are praying for peace in our world. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Amen. So, Father Henry, last week we celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. And of course, we're always struck by his prayer for peace, and we make that our own. And boy, this weekend, now we really have to turn in our hearts and minds and pray for peace in our world. It was bad enough hearing that there was a terrorist attack this week, but then hearing the depth of it really turns your stomach. First of all, we stand in unity with our Jewish brothers and sisters right here in New York City. There are many, many people living in our midst, many of our neighbors who have families in Israel who are concerned about the well being of those families. We certainly have many people here in the New York area who have a great love for the nation of Israel, who have connections in other ways. So their hearts are broken, and we really pray earnestly with one another and for our Jewish brothers and sisters. I think that is my first thought on this day.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: It's truly an incredible act of violence. And when you see the destruction of war, when you see the violence and just the evil in the world, it can be quite disheartening, I think, to see it really is.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: We heard the terrorist attack and some amount of the hostage taking, the inhumanity of what happened. I mean, imagine, well, remember what happened here on September 11, and that was terrible. So you imagine a building going down, which would be horrible enough, but then to go door to door, imagine that after the Twin Towers went down, you had other people who would go door to door and just indiscriminately execute people or take people hostage, or you hear about that music event, it breaks any convention of war. It breaks any sense of human dignity. To me, that is unspeakable. There are many, many things that can be condemned, but wow, that kind of attack, kind of a cowardly attack is just a real crime. So our hearts go out to our Jewish brothers and sisters, but also to the nation of Israel as the death toll crimes. It's somewhere around more than 900 as of this recording. It's a crime against humanity. It's not just a Jewish crime. It's a crime against humanity. We're reminded in the sense of some of our own experience of suffering of terrorist attacks.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: You think of it in light of the recent readings both this past Sunday st. Paul's letter to the Philippians. Brothers and sisters be anxious about and the gospel recently this week with Martha. And know, Martha, you're anxious about so.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Many things and that's know this is like but one area of war and of evil in the world. I mean, we're still concerned about what's happening in Ukraine that hasn't lightened up. And the attacks on innocent people, the bombing of cities and taking of innocent people, of children being orphaned and brought over to Russian territory. It's incomprehensible. How can you even imagine that kind of hatred? So certainly we condemn it in the strongest of terms. The other thing that has been disturbing over the weekend right here, again coming back to New York is while this is an attack on a nation, while there's a secular edge to this, what it's done is it's also fueled anti Semitism right here. One of the great beauties of this country is that people have a right to protest and the right to free speech, and we want to defend that. But again, there's a difference between protests and then to take on anti Semitism. And some of those protests in New York City right here are alarmingly anti Semitic. And there's no room for that. There's no room for that in a civil society.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: We reflect on Respect Life Month this month. And that's not just simply there's that.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Common thread that goes through the church's social teachings, and we talked about it last week when we were talking about immigration. Human dignity. Every human person is created in the image and likeness of God. So an attack against another person, whether it be, as you say, Respect Life Month, whether it be through abortion, but also an attack because of racism, an attack because of anti Semitism, those kinds of attacks across the board, it's the same principle. It's human dignity. And then in the same vein, in our policy, in the way that we treat one another, the way that we try to help one another, the way we stand with one another, it's all human dignity. We just have to keep coming back to that, that we have to see in the eyes of every human person the image and the likeness of God. And sometimes that's not easy. Sometimes there are people we look at who aren't very nice to us. Sometimes we look at situations where there are other issues. But, wow, we have to see in the eyes of every person the image and likeness of God. And so we'll be talking more about Respect Life Month during this time in October, but in the meantime, boy, you can't get that thought out of your head.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: I think of the psalm that we pray often in the liturgy of the hour, psalm 122, for the peace of Jerusalem, pray. May those who love you prosper, may peace be within your ramparts, prosperity within your towers. It's been a common prayer of the Church for centuries to pray for peace in such a conflicted area. We continue that pledge of prayer.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: You know, you mentioned last Sunday's readings, and I was reflecting on a talk given by Father Timothy Radcliffe, former general master of the Dominicans, and he was giving a retreat prior to the synod, and he spoke on the theme of hope against hope. So while we don't lessen our voices in condemnation of the viciousness of the attack, of the attacks on human dignity, on anti Semitism, we don't do that. But we do as people of hope. Remember, St. Paul says, we would not have you grieve, brothers and sisters, as those who have no hope. Yeah, we grieve, but we grieve as people who have hope and hoping against hope. And that hope for us is found in the fact that the victory has been won, that God has overcome evil, and that God is still allowing us to work out that plan in this world, in this finite human world, as we head on toward eternity, but that the victory is indeed won. Jesus rose, jesus conquered death. We need to keep going back to that. During the week. The readings were from the Book of Jonah, and I love the Book of Jonah. It's like a little bit of a novel, and it has its fanciful know, jonah being swallowed up by the great fish. We imagine a whale, Jonah trying to run away from the task that he was given.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: I love the scene.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Being thrown off the boat, and then as they're throwing him off the boat, petitioning the Lord, we're sorry for what we're know, please don't hold us against us.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: But even Jonah, I love it. Even Jonah, when he was on the boat, he's saying, the storms are coming. He says, okay, I'm the guilty one here.
This is all about followed by the whale. And then where does he end up in Nineveh? But Jonah was faced with an impossible task. God was asking him to do something that was seemingly impossible. Nineveh would never convert. So Jonah saying, Why would you send me there? Why would you send me to do this impossible task? And then he pulls himself up by the bootstraps and he says, okay, 40 days more Nineveh will be destroyed. Well, what happens, people to convert? The impossible took place. We're not optimistic people. We're hope filled people, and we draw our hope from Jesus christ. We as Christians do. And so we'll never cease to cry out for peace. We'll never cease to work toward it. We'll never cease to do our parts, but we do so with hope, with that sense of Christian hope, and that's going to carry us.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: That's our beautiful distinction between optimism and hope filled.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: I like, you know, so we hope against hope, as St. Paul says. We hope against hope. And even know, Paul says, don't have any anxiety about anything at all. You know where he was when he wrote that, right? He was in a of I plead with you as a prisoner of the Lord. We say, oh, isn't that nice language?
[00:09:00] Speaker A: No, he was in a jail cell shackled.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: He was shackled in a jail cell. He wasn't sitting in some cushy office saying, don't have any anxiety about anything. He was sitting in a jail cell saying, don't have any anxiety, but rather with fervent petition, bring your cares and concerns to the Lord. Indeed, the task seems a lot. We do what we can. You prayed beautifully. The prayer of St. Francis. Pray that we can work for peace in our own little areas. I once heard a talk about our area of concern versus our area of influence. Like, we might have big concerns about the state of the world. Not much I can do about it, but I do have an area of influence where I can make a difference. And the thing is, if we live more in that area of influence, our world gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The area of influence gets bigger. If we can be peacemakers even in our own society, in our own families, that can catch on again hoping against hope. Whereas if all we do is fret, the world gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So we pray. We pray, we remain people filled with hope. We condemn absolutely the horrors of the terrorist attack, but as people of hope, we continue to work in our own midst for peace, and we look at that all around the world. Right? Amen. This weekend, I don't know if I would say a lighter note, but certainly small concerns versus big concerns. That's right. My disappointment on Saturday with the rain affecting us and canceling our event is certainly now overshadowed. Sometimes I realize my worries are small when compared with the realities of the day, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Of course, we were looking forward to the Eucharistic revival event in Coney Island. We were hope filled, and we remain hope filled, and we still remain.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Maybe we were optimistic, but it's hope filled because you know what hope is going to conquer.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: That's right. So, unfortunately, our diocese had to postpone the event at Coney Island at Maimonides Park for our Eucharistic revival. Please, God, sometime in the spring.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Well, actually, yes, I'm hoping it'll be in the spring. We have to work on getting a venue, getting the date. We're working on that right now, and I hope we'll be able to announce something soon. My eyes are on the spring. But, you know, as sad as I am about that gathering, we learned a few things. First of all, we were turning people away at over 7000 people.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Incredible.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: But that tells me about the faith of people in Brooklyn. Queens is enormous in itself, but now we know what we're dealing with. Now we know that people will come out for something like this. So maybe we have to go bigger. I think we're going to go indoors this time.
That's again, the difference between hope and optimism.
We'll go indoors and we'll seek to be able to build on what we've been looking forward to. We have some thoughts in mind. I'm not ready to say them now because we still have a lot of checking to do to see what may work and what may not work. But yes, we will certainly gather again. And I want to thank everyone who made a commitment to Go to take part in that day. Just the interest alone lifts me up. It's amazing. It boosts my hope. The hope is already there, but it boosts my hope. Secondly, I want to thank the committee and wow, they worked hard to prepare, and then they had to make tough calls. We had to go through last week as we're watching the weather and making sure that we knew it was going to rain, and when the forecast became pretty definitive, we just had to face it. So I thank them for all the work and for all the angst that leads up to it. But we will celebrate who we are. We talked about alternative things, and some parishes did continue to celebrate that day, and I'm glad for that. But the idea of doing it on television or on zoom and joining in parishes, to me, the idea was to be together.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: And I still want us to be together. So maybe the Lord is giving us something new. And we still continue to build on that sense of our shared belief. We talked about this last week with the Synod. I keep going back to our shared belief. We celebrate our diversity, but more important is we celebrate the unity that ties our diversity together. And that unity is our unity in faith tied to Jesus Christ.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Speaking of diversity, I mean, we began this week with Italian heritage.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: That's right. Columbus Day. We celebrated Columbus Day. Well, you know, more than Italian heritage. The day before, I was at St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was filling in for Cardinal Dolan, and wow, what an honor that was. What a privilege. So two Mondays in a row, I celebrated mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But the day before, they celebrated Hispanic heritage and the Hispanic connection to Columbus. And there was a parade and all kinds of celebration. So, yeah, we celebrated all the different diversities. We celebrated all the different cultures. But Monday was a day for Italian culture. And boy, did we celebrate. And had a wonderful day. It was a beautiful day outside.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: It absolutely was.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: It was the beginning of autumn. We felt the crispness in the air.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: That's right. A great showing. And you posted something on your Facebook page with some beautiful photos of the event. There was a great showing of some of Brooklynites as well.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: And so the bookends of this week, the Italians, Christopher Columbus, and then this Sunday, October 15, we're celebrating here at the Co Cathedral, the Polish Heritage Mass, which you'll be present for. And we're really looking forward to welcoming such a beautiful celebration every year here at the Co Cathedral.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: That's right, it is. Now, we were talking before, I understand traffic is going to be a horror on Sunday.
So if you're coming to the Mass, plan ahead, take other routes. BQE is going to be closed around Atlantic Avenue, so I can picture it.
You might see me coming down here on.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: But we're really expecting a great turnout, I hope. Please God. And actually, this year we're doing something special after the Mass. Father Stash has prepared a concert group of musicians, performers from Poland who have flown here to be here. It's a concert on the life of St pope John Paul II. So we're really looking forward to debuting that here. It was actually performed at World Youth Day. It will be here performed at the Co Cathedral after Mass. Very good evening.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: It is. It's a great celebration. Last year, I could only greet the people. I had something on the calendar already that day. But this year we made sure to keep that day free so that I could be present for that. So yes. Again, we celebrate the richness of the cultural diversity that blesses us here in Brooklyn and Queens.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Bishop, perhaps you'd like to end with a blessing.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Sure. Lord God as we continue to pray for peace in our world and as we commend to your care those who are suffering and those who live under the shadow of violence in their homelands in Israel, in Ukraine and all around the world. We ask your blessing upon us that we may be your peacemakers in the world and be your messengers of hope and consolation. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May Almighty God bless you. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Amen. Thanks again for tuning into another edition of Big City Catholics. We hope that you'll share this on your own social media platforms and tune in again next week.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: God bless.
