This past April 24th, Bishop Edward Slattery of the Diocese of Tulsa celebrated a Pontifical High Mass in the extraordinary form (what some call the "Latin Mass" or the "Tridentine Mass") at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. The Mass celebrated the fifth anniversary of the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI to the throne of St. Peter.

Going in, the Mass had several developing "subplots." Clearly such a high profile "Mass in the extraordinary form" attended by thousands speaks to the desire on the part of many for this traditional mode of public worship, not to mention the Holy Father's support for this initiative.

A very different note was struck leading up to the Mass. Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, a retired Vatican official who has been intimately involved in the governance of the Latin Mass movement, was slated to celebrate this special Mass. However, shortly before the event a 2001 letter was leaked to the press in which this respected curial official supported a French bishop's decision not to report a priest accused of sexual abuse to the secular authorities (because of the seal of the confessional). 

Because of protests and security issues (not to mention questions concerning translatlantic flights due to volcanic ash), Cardinal Hoyos was asked to step aside. It was at that point that Bishop Slattery agreed to step in and celebrate this Mass. 

Many were looking at this Mass through their own particular lens or agenda, including many who have been heaping various calumnies upon the Pope as a result of the demonstrably scurrilous attacks that have been made even in "mainstream" media in recent months.

But Bishop Slattery, through his remarkable homily, set a very different tone.

In what I thought was "inclusive" in the best and most beautiful sense, Bishop Slattery identified suffering as a common denominator that unites us:

"From the enormous suffering of His Holiness these past months to the suffering of the Church’s most recent martyrs in India and Africa, welling up from the suffering of the poor and the dispossessed and the undocumented, and gathering tears from the victims of abuse and neglect, from women who have been deceived into believing that abortion was a simple medical procedure and thus have lost part of their soul to the greed of the abortionist, and now flowing with the heartache of those who suffer from cancer, diabetes, AIDS, or the emotional diseases of our age, it is the sufferings of our people that defines the culture of our modern secular age."

As a loving father and pastor, Bishop Slattery reminds us that while suffering itself is part of the human condition,"'Christ reveals Himself to those who suffer in Christ, to those who humbly accept their pain as a personal sharing in His Passion and who are thus obedient to Christ’s command that we take up our cross and follow Him."

He thus identifies obedience, imaged by Our Lord's Sacred Heart and made living and active in our lives through Christ's sacrificial love made present to us at every Mass, as the heart of the Christian life. He characterizes Christian obedience not as a burden or imposition, but as "that movement which the heart makes when it leaps in joy having once discovered the truth."

Bishop Slattery concludes his message as follows:

"Suffering then--yours, mine, the Pontiff's--is at the heart of personal holiness, because it is our sharing in the obedience of Jesus which reveals His glory. . . . If someone asks about the homily, tell them it was about a mystery, and if someone asks what I said of the present situation, tell them only that we must--all of us--become saints through what we suffer."

I couldn't help but shake my head and agree that this is the definitive answer to all the pain, crises, and scandals that afflict us individually, as families, and as a Church and world community. I heartily recommend reading the homily in its entirety, as well as this article by Bishop Slattery that I published in Lay Witness magazine back in 2002, which addresses similar themes in the midst of the clerical sex abuse crisis.