 It's a pleasure to be again speaking to you and especially on the topic of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, you know, not only the bishop who ordained me, but also to working with his cause now. I really think he would be an enormous blessing to the church for his canonization, beatification and canonization. And we are really not that far from the beatification. We're only three steps away. Problem is we're like a ship out at sea with the motor off, we're not moving anywhere. So once we get past this, our little obstacle about the body, I think the beatification will come immediately. You know, we have that case of a little boy who was stillborn and he had no life signs. He had triple zero, no brain waves, no heartbeat, no breathing. And he was examined four different times and they, after 61 minutes, without any life signs, they were actually signing his death certificate and the little boy started to breathe. And the mother, all through it all, she kept invoking Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen. So it's already been presented to Rome, that case. And they, the medical team in Rome studied it. And all seven members of the medical team said there is no known natural or human explanation for how this little child began to breathe. So that clears the way to a miracle. The theologians, seven of them who studied the case, said it was clear that the only one invoked in this situation was Archbishop Fulton Sheen. So they said he would be the one responsible for this miracle or whatever, you know, for this intercession. And that's where it stopped because the next step is to examine the body. And right now there's a difference over the body, you know, between New York and Peoria. So that hopefully, please pray that we can break through that impasse. I really believe that Bishop Sheen would be a great, great saint in America. You know, he wrote a, he wrote an editorial. He wrote for two different newspapers. He wrote editorials. He wrote for one, one newspaper for 15 years and another one for seven years. And one of his editorials was American Needs a Saint, by which he meant a homegrown American saint. Because I think at the time he wrote that, I think the only saint we had in America was Mother Cabrini. And she was a naturalized citizen. So he said we need a homegrown American saint, somebody from the hot land of America. And he was proposing Bishop Ford of Merinola was martyred in China. Bishop Ford was from Brooklyn. I never thought of Brooklyn as the hot land of America. A wonderful place, but not exactly the hot land of America when you think of that. But he proposed him. And I said, you know, I think maybe the saint we need now is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. If we could begin with a little prayer to the Holy Spirit to our lady, okay, the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and in kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall be created. Shall we move? Let us pray. O God who did instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us by this same spirit to be truly wise, endeavor to rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord. We pray to our blessed lady, Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. And blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Sorrowful and immaculate heart of Mary for us, Saint Joseph, and servant of God, Archbishop Sheen. The name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit. Fathers, I don't know if there's any sisters here, women, okay, but I want to greet you with the greeting of St. Francis. May the Lord give you his peace. You know, whenever Bishop Sheen gave talks, many times he would begin with a little story or two, so I'd like to share one little story that he told when one time he was traveling by train down to Philadelphia, and when he got to the station there, he didn't know where the city hall was. He had to go there to give a talk. And there was a young boy there, a little boy at the station, and he said to him, son, where is the city hall here, you know, in Philadelphia? And the little boy didn't know Bishop Sheen was, and he began to give him direction. Well, you have to go down this street about three blocks, but then you have to turn right and go left, and then he finally said to Bishop Sheen, I think I better take you there so you don't get lost. So as they're going along, you know, the little boy got curious, and he said to Bishop Sheen, he said, what are you going to do at the city hall? And the bishop said, I'm going to talk to a group of people. And the little boy said to him, well, what are you going to tell them? And he said, I'm going to tell them how to get to heaven. And the little boy looked up at him and he said, you can't do that. You couldn't even get to the city hall. You know, he also told a story where one time he was at St. Patrick's Cathedral. This was St. Patrick's Cathedral when he was on radio on Senior Sheen. He was standing in the back of St. Patrick's, and this man came up to him and saw the Roman collar, didn't know who he was. And he said to him, Father, Father, can I go to confession? You know, I'm very angry. You know, that Monsignor Sheen on one of his programs, he said something that upset two of my Protestant friends, and I'm really angry at him. And I think I've got to go to confession. And Sheen said to him, look, look, I know you're upset. Look, you don't have any meanness in your heart, no revenge or anything. You're upset. You know, I get upset about him a lot myself. He said, so he told the guy, you don't have to go to confession. You can wait till your next regular time for confession. And as he was leaving, the guy said to him, you know, if only there were more priests in the church like you. So you say you never know what he was going to run into. You know, let me go through a little bit of his life so you have a little bit of idea about him, and then we'll go on to his love of the priesthood. He was born in El Paso, Illinois on May 8th, 1895. And he was the oldest of four brothers. Three of them came right in a row there. His father was Newton Sheen. His mother was Delia Fulton. Now, when he was baptized, he was baptized Peter John Sheen. But what happened with that name, Fulton, is that he was a colic child, and so he cried an awful lot. In fact, one neighbor said that child never stops crying. So the maternal grandparents, the Fultons, would come and help their daughter, and they would take him, stroll him little Fulton around the town, and people kept saying, that's Fulton's kid, Fulton's kid. And he liked the name. And when his grandfather took him to the cathedral school to sign up, you know, for school there, the nun asked, what's his name? And he said, his name is Fulton. And years later, somebody said to him, you know, there's no Saint Fulton, he said, not yet. And so that name stuck with him, Fulton Jay Sheen. And the day he was baptized, his mother placed him on the altar of the Blessed Mother and dedicated him to our Lady. And he said, all through my life, I felt the influence of that dedication pulling me toward our Blessed Lady. He went to the parish school there. One thing happened when he was about eight years old, he was serving mass there at the school Bishop Spaulding, I'm sorry, he was serving at the cathedral. Bishop Spaulding was the celebrant, and he dropped the crewit, one of the crewits, and it shattered. And he used to say in his talks, nothing sounds as loud as a crewit, shattering on a marble floor in a cathedral in the presence of a bishop. And after the mass was over, the bishop called him over, and told him he was going to get a scolding. And the bishop said to him, son, where are you going to go to school when you're older? And it was already a high school named after Bishop Spaulding, it was the Spaulding Institute. So he said, I'm going to go to the Spaulding Institute. It sounded like a politically correct answer, you see. And the bishop said, no, I don't mean that. He said, you go home and you tell your parents that someday you will go to the University of Louvain in Belgium as I did, and you will be a bishop as I am. He was eight years old when the bishop told him that. So he went to that school, you know, the Spaulding, the grammar school, St. Mary's Cathedral Grammar School, then the Spaulding Institute, and which was staffed by the brothers of Mary at the time. He then attended St. Viadier College in Bourbonay, Illinois. And there's two very important things that happened. He was on the debate team, and it was the night before Little St. Viadier College was going to debate the University of Notre Dame. It was like, you know, David and Goliath, huh? And the father, Begin, who was the head of the debate team, he called young Fulton over, and he said to him, Fulton, you are one of the worst students I've ever had for public speaking. You have absolutely no natural talent as a speaker. You listen to his talks and you say, how could you possibly say that? So he said, I want you to give the talk you're going to give tomorrow in the debate. So he went through the talk, and Father Begin said, all right, do it again. Do it again, five times. And finally he said to young Fulton, do you know what you're doing wrong? He said, I think I'm not being myself. He said, that's exactly right. Well, the next day for the first time ever, and maybe the last time ever, Little St. Viadier College defeated the University of Notre Dame in the debate. And he never forgot that. At the end of his college experience, he entered a national scholarship, a scholarship contest, and he was a national winner. Now, we're talking 1915. He won a scholarship worth about $15,000. I wonder how much that would be worth today, maybe $150,000. I don't know. It entitled him to go three years of postgraduate work in room and board being paid for. So he runs to see Father Begin with the scholarship that he had just won. I said, Father, look, I won that scholarship. And Father Begin challenged him. And when he referred to this incident, he said, there were events in your life that will change you. And this was one of them. He said, Father Begin said to him, Fulton, rip that up. But Father, I can go to any university I want, get a doctorate in any degree I want, and Father Begin said, but Fulton, you know you have a vocation to the priesthood. He said, but Father, I can go get this doctorate first, then I can go to the seminary. And Father Begin said to him, Fulton, you don't put off the call of Christ. You know what he did? He ripped up $15,000 like that. And he never turned back. And he went up to St. Paul's seminary up in Minnesota, and he was ordained on September 20, 1919, in that cathedral where he dropped the crew at. And the bishop told him that he would be a bishop someday. After he renewed his desire to offer Mass every Saturday when the liturgy permitted it in honor of the Blessed Mother because of his great love of our Lady. In the seminary, I have to mention this, this is very important. He began a practice of the Eucharistic Holy Hour. Did I mention? I don't think I mentioned that in my talk to you yesterday, did I? The Eucharistic Holy Hour? Okay, I was at a seminary as I mentioned. See, what happened? He got, he heard of an incident that happened in China. It was a little girl about 12 years and she was in the church when the boxers took control of the town and they broke open into the church. They broke open the tabernacle and the priest was put under house arrest. There was always a soldier guarding the priest and they forced open the tabernacle and took all the hosts and consecrated hosts and threw the body of Christ all over the sanctuary. Now that little girl saw this. Now whether the soldier saw her or they didn't mind that she saw this, that little girl was so affected. Now the priest knew he had 32 hosts in the tabernacle. For 32 nights, that little girl came back to the church, climbed in a window on the opposite side of the church from where the priest was. And she would pray in adoration to the bus of sacrament and then on her hands and knees every night she would lick up another host. She wouldn't take the host in her fingers. Those days the laity did not touch the Eucharist like that. So she licked up a host every night. The last night the priest eventually began to see her coming and going and he saw her that night and as and he realized it was the 32nd night. As he saw the little girl leaving the church she made noise and she woke the guard up. The guard, the little girl panicked and she started to run and the guard ran after her. And with his gun, his rifle, he beat that little girl to death. Now the priest saw that and relayed that story. And young Fulton Sheen, it was in second year theology when he heard that, he and a couple of his classmates said that if that little girl could have so much courage that for 32 nights she risked her life for Jesus in the Eucharist, I can spend one hour of every day of my life making a holy hour before the bus of sacrament. And so that's where the inspiration of his holy hour came from. That little girl who was heroic in her love for Christ in the Eucharist. We don't even know, to my knowledge, don't know her name, but certainly heroic. And so he kept that, he kept that faithfully all next for 62 years. You know, no matter whether he was traveling, I remember I heard from one of the missionaries, he was a priest who belonged to a missionary order and he told me that some of his men were in a mission in Africa. And the bishop arrived, there were 2.30 in the morning. And he didn't ask for a meal, he didn't ask for a bed, he asked where is the blessed sacrament, he wanted to make his holy hour. And so he made his holy hour faithfully and sometimes it was difficult. One time he was traveling by train, he arrived in this certain place and he had 3 hours to get another train out. And he found the church and he went in, I guess he was so exhausted and tired that he fell asleep for the whole hour. And when he woke up, he said, Lord, did that holy hour count? And he seemed to think how Lord said to him, well that's the way the apostles made the first one. Sometimes he would actually have to stand right in front of the church looking through the crack in the door at the tabernacle so he could make his holy hour that way. Sometimes he got locked in the church, the sexton let him in and forgot he was in there and locked up the church, he had to climb one time out through the confessional, over the, you know, climb up to the top of the confessional out the window, another time through a cold bin. So, but he was faithful. And he called it the hour of power. And he said he did that for perseverance in his call and fidelity and I'm sure was the source of many of the graces of his priesthood. After ordination, his bishop would wanted to send him to Catholic University. The bishop there was a founder, one of the co-founders of Catholic University. And so he was sent there to get his doctorate. He wanted to study the theology of St. Thomas to deal with the problems of modern time. Okay. And he went there for two years. And after two years, he was really disappointed in the quality of the teaching about St. Thomas. And he asked around, where can I get the best teaching on St. Thomas? And they said, you have to go to Levine in Europe. So, to Levine he went. And so it had the bishop's words, you will go to Levine as I did. And they were so impressed. So, he got his doctorate there, his first one. He seems he got another one in the following year, which he probably got at the Angelicum in Rome. But he was so impressed them that they invited him to study for a super doctorate called the Agriget Degree. And no American had ever received that before. And so he had to study for about two years for that. They brought professors in maybe as many as 200 professors would attend this. It was an all day oral exam. And they would grill them. And he was grilled. And then after you take that exam, you go to your room. If you get a knock on the door, it's a good sign because it means you passed and they have a meal to celebrate. Okay. If you didn't get a knock on the door, you know, you knew where McDonald's was. Okay. So anyway, you could tell how well you did by what they served as a drink at the dinner. If you just passed, you got water. If you did a little bit better, they served beer. If you did very well, you got wine. And if you did exceptionally well, you got champagne. Well, he had buckets and buckets of champagne. That's how well he did. So he certainly was a very learned man. In fact, his reputation, you know, was quite impressive. His friend, Father Ronald Knox at Oxford invited him to come over to Oxford to, you know, teach there with Ronald Knox. He also got an invitation, believe it or not, from Columbia University in New York to open a chair of studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. So he calls his bishop back in, contacts him back in Peoria. He said, I've got these two offers. Which one should I take? Well, some of the people in the diocese were feeding the bishop with the idea, you know, he's had such success because he also won the International Prize for Philosophy, the Cardinal Mercier International Prize. First American to win that, you know. He said, he's not going to listen to anything. He's never going to listen to you again. He's going to have a big head. So the bishop said, don't take either one of them, come back to Peoria. So he goes back to Peoria and the bishop assigns him to an inner city parish, where there were four people going to Mass during the week. He went and visited every single home in that parish. By the time he left, nine months later, there were 90 people coming to Mass every day. And the other pastors were getting furious, you know, jealousy and everything. Don't go down there to listen to that young priest. That's not your parish. And they came and drove. So finally the bishop called him in. He said, well, I promised you that you could teach at Catholic University. So he sent them off in 1926. Now, there's one other little incident I want to mention because it's very, very insightful and interesting. He, during the summers, for about seven different summers, he would go to England and he would prepare his notes for the next year. And he went to a place called St. Patrick's in Soho Square in London. Soho Square at that time was like the old Times Square in New York. It was a seamy place. And, you know, so he was on duty this one day and the doorbell rang. And he goes to answer the door and there's a woman there and she collapses, you know. He reaches down to pick her up and she sees his Roman collar. Oh, she says, oh, thank you, father. He said, oh, you're a Catholic. She said, yes, I am. He said, who are you? And she pointed to a marquee across the square and said, you see that theater, the marquee there, that name? I'm the leading lady in that play. Well, what happened was the lady had had three boyfriends and they were all finding out about each other. So, of course, where do you go? You go to the local rectory to talk to father to help you get out of the hot water, right? So she came to see a priest. But in order to do that, she drank quite a bit. So she wasn't making any sense. And he said to her, would you come back when you're feeling better? She said, I will, but on one condition. He said, what's that? Yet you promised me you will not ask me to go to confession. All right, I promise you, I will not ask you to go to confession. As she was leaving, she got him to promise a second time. You promise me, you will not ask me to go to confession, I promised you I will not ask you to go to confession. And finally, when she came back later feeling much better. She said, and I remember, will you promise again you will not ask me to go to confess you, I promise you I will not ask you to go to confession." Well, he talked to her for a while. She felt much better. And she was ready to leave. He said, you know, have you ever seen the inside of our church? We have a very beautiful church next door here. Can I show you some of the artwork in the church? So they're walking down the aisle and he's pointing out, you know, artwork on the ceiling and the walls of the church and the stained glass and all that. When we got, when he got by the confessional, he pushed her right in. See, he kept his promise. He didn't ask her to go. The woman made a confession of her whole life and ended up becoming one of those Benedictine cloistered nuns at Tyburn, which is just a short ways away from there, where the martyrs, the English martyrs were killed at Tyburn. There's a perpetual alteration of the Tyburn Benedictines. She was a nun for 40 years, so it wasn't a flukey kind of conversion. It was the real thing. When he came back, he went to teach at Catholic University from 1926 to 1950. So he was there for 24 years. And in 1930, the bishops in the United States or the Catholic men, the National Conference of Catholic Men, wanted to have a national radio program. And they wanted Fulton Sheen to be the host of that program. See, he had begun, when he was teaching at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., on weekends, he would go up to New York, he would go down to, you know, other places, Philadelphia, and so on. And he would begin to preach. He preached at St. Paul's Church on 59th Street in New York. And the crowds would come. And he would be, some of his talks were broadcast locally. So he had a reputation as a speaker. So the Catholic men asked him to come. It was at six o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and he was on for half an hour. It was called the Catholic Hour, but it was a half-hour program. And they estimate that by the time he stepped down in 1950, he had a listening audience of about four to five million people on a Sunday evening. Okay? So he became a national voice. And then what happened was, he got transferred from Washington, from his assignment at Catholic University, up to New York, to become the national director of the propagation of the faith. He used to say, the missions of the church were always my first love. So he went there, and his work, his great work, was to raise funds for the missions and send money out all over, you know. I met a man who told me that he knew these Baptists, they were in the South, they were African-Americans, and they were being persecuted by the Klan. They wanted to build a church, and so they wrote to him, could you help us build a church? And they told him of their situation, and he sent them $5,000 to build a church. And the man who told me the story, he said, you know, they love your man, he said to me, that's the way he put it. They love your man because of what he did for them. By the way, he had a great love for the poor. He had a great love for minorities and, you know, the rights of people. And, you know, so he was very, very keen on that, very keen. So he went up to New York, and through the good graces at the time of Cardinal Spelman, he was consecrated a bishop in Rome at the American church there, the church of St. John and Paul. On June 11, 1951, Cardinal Piazza was the one who consecrated him along with two other bishops. Now when he came back in 1951, the Dumont Network, which later on I think became ABC, the Dumont Network wanted to have a religious program. So at that time, all the major networks had to have a half-hour religious programming. So they decided to get Fulton Sheen, all right, he had just become a new bishop. So they put him on television, that was his program, you know, the life is worth living. And he was on for half an hour. Now they deliberately put him opposite Milton Burl. Milton Burl was Mr. Television. Milton Burl was on Tuesday night from 8 to 9. They put Bishop Sheen on Tuesday night from 8 to 8.30. They figured nobody's going to listen to it anyway, okay, that was their thinking. Within six months, most of the people, the viewers who were watching Milton Burl were watching Bishop Sheen from 8 to 8.30. Then at 8.30, they turned back to Milton Burl. In fact, Milton Burl said, and remember, he was Jewish. He said, if I had to lose a good part of my viewing audience to anybody, I couldn't think of anybody better to lose it to than to the man Bishop Sheen represents, who's Jesus. So that was a comment. Remember, the secular press began to talk about Uncle Fulti, Uncle Milti and Uncle Fulti, what do you call it? And you know, it's amazing with something that could really be a source of great jealousy and, you know, just envy. There was no bitterness between them. It's interesting. So anyway, he was on, and in that first full year on television, 1952, he won an Emmy as the most outstanding personality on television. He, in the, in the voting, he, he outscored Lucille Ball, Jimmy Duranty, Edward R. Morrill. So you could tell he was popular, most outstanding personality on television. And when he went to get his Emmy, you know how everybody, they thank their producers, directors, he says, I want to thank my writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So, so, so he had won this great Emmy. And he had between 25 and 30 million people watching him on a Tuesday night. I told that to an assistant producer for ABC. No, CBS. He was stunned. And you know, of the religious groups in the United States, the major ones, Catholics, Protestants and Jewish, the highest percentage that watched him was Jewish. The second highest is Protestant. Third was Catholics. Maybe the Catholics, I had enough of that on Sunday, but whatever. But he was greatly, greatly, you know, honored and, you know, they, they really admired him. In fact, when that producer said, had you account for that, I said, well, he told him the truth. And they, they trusted him for that. And they, they were very grateful. So he was on television then from 1951 to 1956. Okay. In 1956, he basically was removed from television. He would never talk about it. You know, he had some trouble at that time, you know, with Cardinal Spellman. He had received as the head of the propagation of the faith, he had received a million dollar donation from the US government to buy powder milk for children in the poor countries of the world. They figured through the propagation of the faith, they could get this powder milk out to children all over the world. Well, Spellman said to Sheen that you received that as an auxiliary bishop of New York. So I have a right to tax that money. And Sheen said, no, I didn't receive it as an auxiliary bishop of New York. I received it as the head of the propagation of the faith. You don't have a right to tax that. Well, the tension got so great, maybe you had the most powerful bishop in America was Spellman. And the most popular bishop in America was Sheen. You know, so he had this real clash. And it got so intense that Pius XII called them both over to Rome. And he listened to both sides. And he said to Spellman, who was his close friend, in this case, Sheen is right, you cannot tax that money. That's meant for the poor and has to be given to the poor. Well, after that, you know, Bishop Sheen was basically persona non grata in New York, you know, and that's why he did a lot of preaching all over the country. And so he and he began, you know, his writing, he wrote 65 books. His favorite, his favorite, was the world's first love about the Blessed Mother. Some great ones on the priesthood, you know, the priest is not his own and those mysterious priests, you know, powerful books on the priesthood. And, and, you know, some of the his great book on the life of Christ, you know, great for meditating on the life of Christ. So his writing and so on. Now, in 1966, oh, he was at the council. He went to all the sessions at the council. And whenever he was next, he was announced that he was the next speaker, all the bishops who usually went out to those little coffee clotches, you know, there, they came back in to hear him speak. And he was at all four sessions of the council. When they asked him, when they asked for the bishops for suggestions of topics to discuss, he suggested to talk about the role of women in the church. And he was told that's not important. It's one of the most burning issues in the church today, you know. Another thing he said was you should drop the name Propaganda Fidei from the propagation of faith. The word propaganda in many countries sounds like, you know, propaganda and it's very negative. And some bishops attacked him. How could you dare suggest that this sacred name and year later they changed the name to the pontifical, you know, world pontifical missions. So he was a man who was very far ahead because remember his view, his view was not localized to one country or one area. He had the whole world that he was dealing with, you know, especially with the missions. Now in 1966, after the council, he went up to Rochester and he became Bishop Rochester from 66 to 69. It wasn't a very easy thing up there, but for me, that's where I got ordained by him. I was a student in, we had a little seminary in Geneva, New York, and my director asked, would you ordain Brother Andrew? And sure enough, we took a little trouble getting past his secretary who only wanted to set his schedule for one week in advance, so he can't get ordained in a week. But finally, we got to the bishop and he said, I told you, I would ordain him and I will. He stepped down in 1969. I think he felt he was a failure. He spoke to Pope Paul VI, he was very close to Pope Paul VI, and four times he asked the pope to accept his resignation. The first three times the pope wouldn't even listen to it. Finally, the fourth time he pleaded with the pope and the pope accepted his resignation. He didn't want him to step down, you know, feeling that he was a failure, but he knew there was opposition. He said he went to one parish to talk and the little kids threw stones at his car. He said, little kids, don't do that spontaneously. So he felt he had become ineffective and one of the things I think brought on a lot of difficulty for him, I told you that he was very much a person of great justice. The big company for employment in Rochester was Kodak. Kodak had promised some minority people better pay and jobs and everything, but they reneged on that. He commented on that. That must have infuriated a lot of the priests and the dioceses because their people worked for Kodak and the people must have been telling them and the bishops, you know, making things very, very difficult for us with his comments, but that's the kind of man he was. In fact, there was a there was a march, I don't know if it was the end of World War II, and it was segregated. The units were segregated, you know, and there was a fence separating, you know, the Caucasian from the minority soldiers. He went and helped tear down that fence. He said, this shouldn't be. You know, that's the kind of man he was. They criticized him for a lot of things and he never dared criticize him that he didn't have concern for the poor. He had a great concern, you know, for the poor. Well, his last 10 years, he basically used, I think, in giving retreats, and particularly for the renewal of the priesthood. Okay. And so I'd like to, he died on, he died on October, I'm sorry, December the 9th, 1979. Shortly after he had, you know, Pope John Paul II had come to the United States for his first visit, a member in 1979, and he visited St. Patrick's Cathedral. And maybe you've seen that picture of the Pope embracing Bishop Sheen there in St. Patrick's Cathedral. And he said to Bishop Sheen, you have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus. You are loyal son of the church. And Bishop Sheen said, you know, the many things that were said about me and to me, I always hold that as probably the greatest tribute. John Paul and he were very good friends, you know. So let's say a little bit about his thoughts on the priesthood. Okay. I know for me, you know, he's had such an impact on my life, you know. At Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, there's a statue of St. John, Viennese, and on the bottom of it, who's now patron saint of all priests, and on the bottom of that statue, the beautiful words, the priesthood is the joy, the heart of Jesus. And I know that it was the joy of Bishop Sheen also to be a priest. He said in his autobiography, Treasure and Clay, I cannot remember a time when I did not want to be a priest. He wrote those books I mentioned. Priest is not his own, those mysterious priests. And his books and tapes even now are helping many priests to remain faithful. Monsignor Franco, who recently put out a book on I think from some letters from Bishop Sheen, he lived and worked with Bishop Sheen for about five years at the Propagation of the Faith. And he told me that he was in Africa in 1999. He was big gatherings of priests, remember he had big gatherings all over the world. And he was up on the platform. He didn't speak, but he was simply introduced as a priest who had lived and worked with Fulton Sheen. And he said after the talks were over, all these African priests came to him and said we're being kept going by Bishop Sheen's books and his tapes. Inspiring so much. I remember a seminary and telling me there's so much in this book, the priest is not his own, that I have to read it slowly to absorb it all. And many of these books now have been reprinted in recent years. As a bishop, he loved to ordain men. And first thing he said in the homily at my ordination was this, one of the great joys of being a bishop is the power of generation. It is given to a bishop to have sons in Christ through the power of ordination, to prolong into another generation sons upon whom he has given the august power of the priesthood. So what were those powers? He described the power of mass. He said the powers that are given simply in a few words are staggering. One of the powers for example is to go to the hill of Calvary and take up the cross to plant it down in Geneva in the Capuchin monastery in Africa in Asia or in any city or village. This he said is the power of offering mass. It is the prolongation in space and time of the redemptive work of our Lord. What our Lord did on Calvary in a certain sense was localized. What we do by the mass is to apply it all over the world. Our Lord wrote the first note in this melody of redemption. And by the mass we add our own notes to it. And this is the harmony of the people of God. So he stressed also the power of absolution. You know, he said that then there was the power to forgive sins. You will never forget your first absolution. I never forgot mine either. I was so nervous. I had just gotten my faculties. I was a simplex priest for about three months. I was ordained early but didn't take my exam until June, July, and you know. It may manifest he said some power to send the man to the moon, which was just happening at that time. But what is that in comparison to sending sins into nothingness? A raised hand and a voice, your sins are forgiven. And quite a part, even from our consciousness of that power, the people themselves feel it and know when they have received absolution. His insights into the understanding of the priesthood, he took much from Scripture. One of his first beautiful comparisons was the priest and victim. He says, this is what distinguishes Christ's priesthood from the Old Testament priesthood and from the pagan priests. See, the Old Testament priests, the pagan priests, when they offered a victim, it was always apart from themselves. A lamb, a bullock, the first fruits. But when Jesus was priest, he was also the victim for he offered himself. And so St. Paul could say, my life is being poured out like a libation. My life is at the service of the gospel. And we as priests, you know, do that also. So we are priests and victim. In fact, in his book, the priest is not his own. He says that in the introduction. He said, if you don't believe that you're both priests and victim with Christ, don't bother reading his book. Because the whole book is based on that. He talked about the cross. He said, this was at the heart of the priestly vocation. He said of priests that they were crucified on the vertical beam of their God-given vocation and on the horizontal beam of the simple longing of the flesh. He said, the priest is called to be the happiest of men. And yet daily is committed to the greatest of all wars, the one waged within. So the priest had to be faithful, he said, carrying out God's will and faithful to the people proclaiming the message in season and out of season. One of his other analogies that he took from scripture was the priest as Simon and Peter. Simon the old man, the paradox, the priest, exalted in Christ yet weak in our humanity. He said, this is clear in his contrast then of St. Peter as both Simon and Peter. Simon was the old man rooted in the ways of fallen nature. He had worldly wisdom, right? Remember when he tried to talk Jesus out of the cross? And what did Jesus say? Get behind me Satan, you think the thoughts of men, not of God. His weakness later on which he would deny the Lord three times. And we all have that weakness. We carry weakness within us. So there's part of us that is Simon. But there's part of us, part of us like Peter. Jesus created Peter's name. Remember, there was no name Peter. He made that up. You see it in the Greek. Petra is rock. But the A made it feminine. So he just put OS, so at least when it's translated. OS was masculine. So he made up a name, rock. Bishop Jean said he called him rocky. He was a little rocky, wasn't he? So he proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, son of the living God. He believed in the teaching of the Eucharist. When the crowds walked away, as Jesus said to them, would you leave me? As if to say, if you don't believe in it, when I'm telling you, go with them. But Peter said, Lord, whom shall we go to? We have come to believe in you. You alone have the words of eternal life. So he stayed, the faith of the church. And then even after his threefold denial, he was to confirm his brothers in the church. So feed my lambs and feed my sheep. That beautiful touching scene there after the resurrection. Remember when Jesus said to him, in the Greek, you get it more clearly than you do in the English. English may have one word for love. When the Greek, you know, first two times Jesus asked him, do you have agape love for me, that full, total, complete, self-sacrificing love? And Peter was afraid to say that. So he answered, I have love for you. I have feeling of love. Like a love of friendship back and forth. It's not as total, not as sacrificial as agape love. And finally, the third time Jesus asked him, do you have feel your love for me? And Peter said, yes, Lord, that's what I have. Feel your love. And he was to remain faithful. And so in our own lives, we feel at times, Simon, the old man pulling, falling, weak. But then Peter restored to the love of Christ and he remained faithful. We have that struggle between the old man and the new spirit that's willing and the flesh that's weak. Archbishop Sheen, in his own life, he recognized the dignity of the priesthood and yet human weakness. Remember, he entitled his autobiography, Treasure in Clay. The treasure was the priesthood. The clay was human weakness. This is what one author said. How did Fulton Sheen see his life? He saw it as a priest, no longer his own, but at every moment acting in the person of Christ. He was to be always an ambassador of Christ. That is one side of the coin. The other is the priest as a man. That is the contrast that Bishop Sheen saw in his life and why he chose the title of his autobiography as Treasure in Clay. The title came from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians about himself and the other apostles being no better than pots of earthenware containing the treasure. He thought the title illustrated the nobility of the vocation to the priesthood and the frailty of the human nature that houses it. Let me skip a little bit here because I'm running out of time. I want to get to something later on in his life. When I was ordained by him, he spoke about how priests are losing their identity, not attracting. He knew the problems that were entering into the priesthood. One of the most important converts that he made, he made about the estimate 52,000 converts that we know of, that he had. One of the most important of them, the most important outstanding was Claire Booth-Luce. She was going to take her life after her daughter died. He asked to see her. She came and he kept talking about God's love and mercy. She screamed at him, how could God be loving and merciful if he took my daughter? He said, because otherwise you wouldn't be here. She became a great convert. There's one other lady I want to tell you about. You may have heard about him, maybe not. Her name was Bella Dodd. Bella Dodd grew up in the Bronx and she was a lawyer. She became a socialist and in 1930 entered the Communist Party. Now, the head of the party at that time was Joseph Stalin. Stalin, I don't know if you know this, but he was in a seminary, got thrown out for reading pornography. He had read Darwin and came to the conclusion that we are simply just developed animals and that's it. Okay, he said in 1930 Stalin, his head of the Communist Party said that the greatest enemy communism has is the Roman Catholic Church and the way to destroy it is to get men into the priesthood who have no faith, no morality, get them through the seminaries, get them ordained and they will cause havoc in the seminary. Have you ever read a little book called AA1025? Okay, it's been reproduced a couple of years ago by Tan Books. AA1025 means anti-apostle. This is exactly the kind of people she was recruiting. When Bishop Sheen converted her 20 years later, she told him, I personally recruited about 1100 men to enter the priesthood to destroy the Catholic Church from within and Sheen knew that. She also told him, we had four people, cardinals, high up in the Vatican who were masons working with the Communists. You know, so he knew the church had been infiltrated. Okay, that's probably why Paul the 6th who was very close to Bishop Sheen said that the odor of Satan has entered even into the sanctuary of the church. So he worked, you know, to, you know, work for the renewal of the priesthood. He said, this is what we need. He said, if there is any key to the renewal, the reform of the church today and the salvation of the world today, it lies in the renewal of the priesthood. So Father, as if you ever get discouraged, know that you have been entrusted by Jesus, you know, with a great mission, you know, to be priests. I forget who it was that somebody told me he was walking down a cart with a nun and he stopped to let her go by. She wouldn't go by, you know, not even an angel walks in front of a priest. That's what she said to him. And so we have been very blessed and sometimes there are discouraging days. We get discouraged with ourselves, our own personal weaknesses, our struggles. But even out of our struggles, God lifts us up. Even the Lord himself, bearing the cross, tradition says he fell a number of times. And so as priests, we know failure at times. But you know what? You can get right back up. The Lord's mercy is overwhelming. And we have been entrusted to be, you know, the bearers of that great mercy. So Father, this has been my pleasure. Maybe someday we can say, St. Fulton Sheen, I hope so. Please pray for that. God love you. Bye now.