Homily: Heroes

[00:00:01] Good morning. Welcome to our guest at St. Mike's today. It's good to have you. Welcome. I'm not sure if anybody here ever knew Miss Swicker from St. Agnes. Miss Marianne Swicker, she was the Dean at St. Agnes for 25 years, I think. And so I was very close for many years with Marianne Swicker and her husband Frank,

[00:00:27] who taught at Christian Mother's High School for about 20 to 30 years chemistry. And first time I ever met Miss Swicker, I was 16 years old and I had hair down to here. And I walked into a dance at St. Agnes and she was waiting at the door and she saw me come in and she said, no, no, no, no, no. Turn around. So she finally let me in and she was on me like a hawk.

[00:00:57] And in her defense I would be too. So years later I said to Miss Swicker, I said, did you remember seeing me? She said, oh yeah, Father, I thought you just got paroled. I was like, truly I look like I did, no question. But I loved Miss Swicker so much. She was so great. Brilliant woman. And as you know, often at masses I will ask people a question

[00:01:21] and usually people don't really want to say much. But Miss Swicker, whenever I would ask questions at mass, she would stand straight up and just shout it out. And her husband Frank was like, oh Lord, honey, you know, doing this. But I'll never forget, before she died in October of 2018, I went to go see Miss Swicker.

[00:01:45] And she said to me something I'll never forget. She said, Fr. Ben, if you don't do anything in your priesthood, learn your history. Learn your history and communicate that history to the people of God. And her words are often swimming in my head. And I think so often, hopefully I've done a little bit to try to learn some history

[00:02:13] and communicate that history to the people of God. For each one of us, you and I have the opportunity every single day of our life to really kind of become heroes. And all throughout our 2,000 year history, we have had many Catholic heroes, many in our own country. And I don't mean this in any offensive way, but I'm just going to be perfectly honest with you.

[00:02:39] Many Catholics who come to Mass don't know their history. And they don't know the history of some of the Catholic heroes that we've had. And that's kind of tragic. Because over 2,000 years, we've had some amazing, amazing heroes. Truly. The power of one person to change one person's life, one person at a time, one moment at a time.

[00:03:08] That's how we become heroes. Truly. Because the greatest, the most heroic things that you and I can do, honestly, is when we don't get any kudos for it. Nobody says, thank you. Nobody even notices. Because God sees it. But often for a lot of us, I think if we're honest, people develop resentments when they think, you know,

[00:03:33] I'm doing this and this and this and that for that person, and they never say thank you. And we get resentful. And you know, we'll be honest. Sometimes a thank you's nice. But the truth is, it's also very heroic when no one notices what we've done. Because God sees it. Everyone who loses his life will save it. But if you save it, you're going to lose it.

[00:04:02] And these small heroic acts we do every day, that's how we win heaven. I'm assuming you want to go there. I do. Matthew chapter 25, Jesus talks about this. He says, you're the light of the world. You're the salt of the earth. Do something with it. What are you going to do with this? Permit me, if you don't mind, just to share with you a few stories of Catholic American heroes.

[00:04:32] Some of which you may not know. For instance, one of my heroes, a man named Fr. Emil Kapuan, he and I went to the same seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He was an army chaplain in the Korean War. If you didn't know this, it gets really, really cold in Korea. And he used to drive his army jeep all over Korea, celebrating mass with the Korean, with the soldiers over there.

[00:04:59] He used the hood of his jeep as an altar, and he would go all over. One day he was taken prisoner. He was marched 90 miles barefoot in the snow to a POW camp. And when he was in the POW camp, Emil Kapuan would sneak out at night,

[00:05:21] and he'd go steal food from the Koreans, and he'd bring it back to feed the American POWs. They experienced malnutrition, disease, lice, extreme lice with these POWs. And shortly before he died, the last thing that Emil Kapuan did on his deathbed, the soldier right next to him had extreme frostbite in his toes.

[00:05:51] And Emil Kapuan leans over, and he pulls his socks off, and he leans over and puts them on the feet of this man with frostbite. And he put his head back, and he died. Father Emil Kapuan, hero, man, hero. That is courage. That's courage. And then, of course, we have Fulton J. Sheen. Is anybody old enough to remember Fulton J. Sheen on...?

[00:06:20] Okay, that's going back a few years. Do you know that next month Fulton J. Sheen will be beatified in St. Louis, Missouri? 24th of next month, it's a Thursday. He's gonna become the last step before becoming a saint, Fulton J. Sheen. From Peoria, was the Archbishop of New York, buried in New York for a while before they moved him. The bishops were kind of fighting over who had his body, right? He's eventually in Peoria. Do you know that when he was eight years old,

[00:06:49] he was serving mass for the Archbishop of New York? And you know this little glass cruet, this little bottle full of water that priests use at mass. Archbishop Sheen is eight years old. He was going over to the Archbishop, and he was so nervous, he dropped it in the basilica. Smashed all over the floor. Glass, water, everybody turns around and they stare at this eight-year-old kid. Can you imagine?

[00:07:19] We're never gonna have any altar servers now, right? And so, you know, his face is like 12 shades of red. And after mass, the Archbishop comes to eight-year-old Fulton Sheen. He says, son, I want to talk to you. So he's thinking he's gonna scold him. So he brings him over, puts his hand on his shoulder, and he leans over to Fulton Sheen.

[00:07:46] He said, one day, you will be the Archbishop in this basilica. And he did. One of the things I appreciate about Fulton Sheen is the man was not threatened by people who disagree with him. He met them where they are and talked to them. Didn't always agree with him, but he would meet them where they are and talk to them. And then, of course, we have Dorothy Day. Amazing woman.

[00:08:16] Sheen died in 79. Dorothy Day died the year after in 1980. And Dorothy Day was an amazing woman. She was a former agnostic, a former atheist, a former communist, and in her words, a former hippie. Dorothy Day. When she was in her early 20s, Dorothy Day had an abortion. She used to, in her words, sleep around.

[00:08:43] And she sank into this deep depression and she said, could God ever forgive someone like me? Could he ever forgive somebody like me? I mean, nobody knows what I've done. Maybe you know this feeling. Could he ever forgive somebody like me? And she began to gradually, gradually believe in his forgiveness and mercy.

[00:09:14] She started the Catholic worker movement in New York. That was a big deal because they were going through the Great Depression. He had all these homeless men, women, and children. And she would feed them day in and day out. Lots of bread, lots of soup. One of the last things that she did, one of the things I loved about Dorothy Day, she was not at all afraid to call Catholic leaders to correction.

[00:09:41] And sometimes that's needed with Catholic leaders. The woman had chutzpah and moxie. On her tombstone, there's two words, Deo gratias. Thanks be to God. Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day. When Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis spoke at Congress, they both said the same thing. Dorothy Day is the model for American Catholics. I could not agree more.

[00:10:12] The woman was amazing. No fear. No fear. She had more courage in her pinky than my whole body, this woman. Incredible. And then, of course, there's a woman, maybe you've heard of her. Her name is Sister Thea Bowman. Anybody ever heard of Sister Thea Bowman? If you've never heard of her, she's a black Catholic nun. Brilliant woman with two doctorate degrees. Incredible.

[00:10:41] She did much to defend the African Americans during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. She had former slaves in her family. Last thing she did before she died, Sister Thea Bowman, she spoke to all the bishops of the American Catholic Church. Spoke to them. She got a round of applause. She went home, put her head down, and passed away.

[00:11:08] She's now buried in Memphis, by the way, at Elmwood Cemetery downtown. You can go pray at her grave. Thea Bowman, whose cause is now up to be a canonized saint. Incredible. And the last person I want to tell you about is a guy, by the way, there's a movie about him out in theaters in Memphis right now. It's called American Martyr. Blessed Stanley Rother.

[00:11:33] He was a Catholic priest who died in 1981. He's from Oklahoma. And blessed Stanley Rother was a normal guy. In those days, when a guy went to the seminary, he had to pay his own way. Now, people pay the way for the seminarians. But in those days, you had to pay your own way. And he had no money. So, he was the plumber for the seminary. That's how he paid his way. He also was all the landscaping.

[00:12:03] He mowed the lawn, like Forrest Gump. He was out there mowing the lawn. That's how he paid his way through seminary. He graduated. The Pope asked for volunteers for priests to go to Guatemala, Central America. And he said, I'll go. I'll go. And he went. Fell in love with the people. You probably have heard me say this before. In the country of Guatemala, there's 22 languages. Spanish is one of 22.

[00:12:29] For instance, they speak a language called Kiche, Cachiquel, Mam, and one called Zutuil. Zutuil. There's no dictionary for Zutuil. You have to be there and live with the people to learn it. And that's exactly what he did. He went down there and learned it orally. One night in 1981, three soldiers came to the rectory door from the government to kill him.

[00:13:00] He let them in. And he knew they were there to kill him. And he said to them very calmly, they were going to take him outside. He said, no, kill me here. I don't want the children to see the blood. That's what they did. The people loved Father Rother so much, they called his parents in Guatemala and said, we want to keep his heart in Guatemala.

[00:13:29] They sent his body home, but his heart is in Guatemala. Next week, I'm going with some of our parishioners to pray where his heart is in Guatemala. Why are you telling us this, Father? This is why I'm sharing all this with you. Jesus said in this gospel, everyone who saves his life will give it away.

[00:13:52] You and I have a life given in order to be given away in small ways every single day. Putting up with people we don't want to put up with because they put up with us and doing small things. And you may never have anyone tell you thank you. But that's okay. We don't need that. Because you know, when we get to heaven, we will see the fruit of all that.

[00:14:22] That's heroism. Thank you.