Together on the Journey: A Weekly Word from Archbishop Hebda
Catholic Schools Week is kicking off throughout our nation this week. The auxiliary bishops and I will be at schools all over the Archdiocese to celebrate with our joyful students, faculties and families.
I felt particularly blessed to be at St. Pascal Baylon Regional School this morning for Mass. St. Pascal’s is an excellent school that draws many of its students from our immigrant communities—it’s a little like the United Nations, with families from Africa, Asia and Latin America alongside local families with solid East-Sider pedigrees.
Given that context, Catholic Schools Week is looking a little different at St. Pascal’s this year. In light of the conflicts that we are experiencing here in the Twin Cities, many of the evening activities have been canceled, with parents cautious about leaving their homes. We’re blessed that generous community members have volunteered to bring students back and forth from school so that their lives are not overly disrupted by the turmoil in our broader community. I asked my altar servers what they thought we could do to have peace return to our streets and a very diplomatic 7th grader responded: “The situation is complex, Archbishop.”
“Complexity” shouldn’t cause us to despair. Even though it wasn’t celebrated liturgically in most of our parishes, yesterday was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (bumped by the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time). It’s hard to imagine a more “complex” situation than the conflict described in the first reading for the feast (Acts 9:1-22). You’ll remember that Saul and his zealous companions were adamant in their persecution of their brothers and sisters who were becoming Christians, seeing no possibility of coexisting with them. Saul is even present when Stephen is stoned to death, and the beginning of the reading describes him as “still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” It’s not surprising, then, that one of those disciples, Ananias, would want nothing to do with the blinded Saul. It’s only the intervention of the Lord himself, appearing to Saul on the road to Damascus, and then to the Ananias, that Saul and Ananias could settle their differences and become brothers in the Lord. Without Saul, spiritually rebranded as Paul, we would not have the two saints we celebrated today, Timothy and Titus.
The conversion of St. Paul is “proof positive” of what the Angel Gabriel told Mary at the Annunciation: “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). That’s why we continue to turn to him in these challenging times, praying that the Lord will change hearts (beginning with our own). I was grateful for all those who joined me in the Cathedral last evening to pray for peace and I’m encouraged by the texts and emails coming in from around the globe assuring us of their prayers and acts of penance for the intention of lasting peace in our streets and homes. May we soon see the fruit of their prayers and ours, manifested in the changing of hearts. Perhaps the reports of the positive conversation between President Trump and Governor Walz this morning is the first of those fruits.
In any event, I’m confident that our loving God won’t give up on the young scholars at St. Pascal’s or on their peers throughout our archdiocese. As their brave contemporaries at Annunciation Catholic School have reminded us all year, we have a God who promises a “future filled with hope.”
Please join me in praying that we might all persevere in our prayer and soon be reminded that indeed “Nothing is impossible with God.”
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