Transcript of Msgr. Shea’s Address
Father Rocky, thank you. Everybody, let’s hear it for 25 years for Relevant Radio. My own association with this great Catholic apostolate is one of the great jewels of my life. I’m so proud to serve on the board of directors of Relevant Radio with some of the best and smartest and most entrepreneurial Catholics in the whole country. And of course, Father Rocky is not least among those. I’m just very grateful for the University of Mary’s association with Relevant Radio and for my own small part in this amazing apostolate. And so I’m happy to be here to celebrate with all of you.
I have agreed throughout the course of my life with just about everything that Patrick Madrid has said, with one exception. At the beginning of the night, he came up here wearing a sombrero, which I didn’t think of. And he said it’s not Taco Tuesday, but it’s the next best thing. Patrick, I disagree with you. Today is the feast of Our lady of Guadalupe. It’s Fiesta Friday, and that’s way better than Taco Tuesday. And so I say, ¡Viva Cristo Rey, Que Viva! ¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe, Que Viva!
In one of the best Catholic novels of the 20th century, Brideshead Revisited, there’s a lover’s quarrel. Charles Ryder and Julia Marchmain are fighting at the fountain on the great manor house. And Charles said it’s like a play. We had the fight scene. Now we’re going to have the reconciliation scene. But that only made Julia more angry. And she said, why must you always see everything secondhand? Why must our lives be a play? This is a line which captivated me when I first read it, but it’s been haunting me for about the last week. Because this is a deadly temptation for all of us to see our lives secondhand, to think that what we’re doing is just a weak imitation of some ancient or erstwhile heroism that happened a long time ago.
Because when we do that, when we live our lives secondhand, instead of seizing them as the great adventure of grace that they truly are, instead of believing that the Holy Spirit is active in the world and in our lives, then we become passive, and we begin to experience or undergo life rather than living it. And when Catholics do this, it is a defect of faith. And that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.
The reason it’s been burning in my heart this past week is that just last week, on the campus of the University of Mary on a Wednesday morning, I was the celebrant at Mass. It was the feast of St. Francis Xavier, that amazing missionary, the patron saint of the foreign missions in the Catholic Church. So there were 500 students jammed into our main chapel. And I looked out at them, and all of a sudden, I was caught by something. And I told them the story of Francis Xavier. How in 1529, almost 500 years ago, he was living in a student residence at the University of Paris. And he happened, not through his own choice, to wind up with two roommates, Peter Faber and Ignatius of Loyola. He was worldly and ambitious. He had all kinds of earthly dreams for his life, this strapping, handsome young Spanish nobleman.
And yet, in that student residence, all those years ago, the Holy Spirit took hold and God began to dream great dreams through those young men in their early 20s. And out of that was born the company of Jesus, the Society of Jesus. And the first Jesuits made private vows on Montmartre, where today the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, the great shrine of the Sacred Heart, overlooks the whole city of Paris. And there’s perpetual adoration on that spot. They made private vows and then they made their way to Rome. And in 1540, in a small chapel at St. Paul outside the walls, just after the approval of the rule of the Company of Jesus, the Society of Jesus by the Holy Father, they made their official vows. And almost instantly after that, Ignatius sent Francis Xavier to the ends of the earth, knowing that he probably would never see his friend again. You start an order and then out of a spirit of abundance and gratitude and trust in God, you send one of your finest men, one of your closest friends, to the ends of the earth.
Well, Francis Xavier went and he went to India and then to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan. And then he died off the coast of China, gazing with longing at that shore, wanting to take the Gospel there. And here’s what I said to our students that morning. I said, it is an error – it is a defect of faith – that we should think of these great conquests of faith, these great evangelistic activities of the church 500 years ago as something for other times and for other people lost in fable. No. Why should such a thing not happen here on our campus? Why shouldn’t it happen here? We have all of the same ingredients. We have student residences.
We have the Holy Spirit, which means that the Church is just as young now as it was then. And what hasn’t changed is that people still need the Lord. People still need the Lord. My friend Curtis Martin, one of the greatest living Catholics in this country, says this generation of Catholics is responsible for this generation of people. And it’s true. So I said, why should it not happen here? If you think that God isn’t going to dream great dreams through you too, in this time, in our place on the plains, the wind swept prairies of North Dakota, then it’s not that you think too much of yourself, it’s that you think too little of Him and of His power.
At the very same time that those three young men, Peter and Ignatius and Francis, were in their student residence together halfway across the world in 1531, the Blessed Mother, the Mother of God, came personally to our continent and appeared to St. Juan Diego, who was a humble Indian peasant, a new convert to the Catholic faith. Let me now say something that is a fact. Juan Diego, when he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary, knew something like 15 times less about the Catholic faith than any one of you. He was simple. He was ignorant, and he knew it. And yet the Blessed Mother chose him. And through the power of those apparitions and the witness of faith, through the tenderness that she showed him and the love of God which came bursting forth.
As a result of those miraculous appearances, the mission fields on our continent changed entirely. Whereas before, there had been almost no success in conversions to the Catholic faith, within 10 years of the apparitions at Guadalupe on Tepeyac Hill, within 10 years, there were 10 million new Catholics and the Blessed Mother had, by her power, put an end to human sacrifice, which was a common practice at that time. In 2012, the Vatican convened Catholic leaders in Mexico City to continue a conversation around the document Ecclesia in America and I was summoned to Mexico City. I had never been there. I’d never seen the shrine Tepeyac. And so I went.
All of the bishops that were summoned to Mexico City stayed at the Four Seasons. I stayed with a bunch of other people at the “One Season”. But I couldn’t believe what I experienced in Guadalupe. It was so beautiful. And to see the tilma up close and to soak in that great story of Guadalupe, what happened on this very day in 1531, how Juan Diego’s uncle, you remember, was sick, and he said, “I’ve got to go to the city. I’ve got to get a priest. But if I try and go to the city, that woman’s going to come. And so maybe I’ll sneak around the backside of the hill, and then she won’t interrupt me, and I can get a priest here quickly to take care of my uncle and give him the last sacraments.”
And he snuck around the back of the hill, and she appeared anyway. It’s a wonderful story. And she appeared anyway. And she said, “Where are you going? What are you doing?” And of course, he got all ashen and embarrassed. And she’s said to have said to him, “Do not fear. Do not fear your uncle’s illness. Do not fear any sharp or harmful thing.”
“¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?” Am I not here? Who am your mother? And those same words are emblazoned at the entrance of the great Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe down there. So I went down there. I was very moved by it. And somebody put into my hands, just as I was leaving for the airport, a little book that was published by the Institute for Guadalupe Studies, the printing of which was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, one of the sponsors of Relevant Radio. So I was reading that on my way home, this little pamphlet and what I read there blew me away because they had discovered, and this was a recent, recent discovery, that all those years ago, those Spanish words, “Am I not here? I who am your mother?” were a mistranslation. Because the Blessed Mother and Juan Diego were not talking to each other in Spanish. They were talking to each other in Nahuatl, the native language of the Mesoamerican people.
And yet, because the earliest translations were in Spanish, it was preserved in that way for all of those years. And I was sitting on an airplane flying from Mexico City back home, and I read in this small booklet what the Blessed Mother really said to Juan Diego, who kept telling her, a woman, “Find someone else. Oh, lady, no one’s going to believe me. I’ve got no credibility. I’m too little, I’m too insignificant, I’m too ignorant, I’m too small. Find somebody else.”
And she said to him, “Do not fear. Am I not here who have the honor to be your mother?” Which is a completely different thing. “Am I not here,” she said to him, “who have the honor to be your mother?”
And that’s the kind of tenderness, that’s the kind of love which vanquishes human sacrifice, ritual sacrifice in temples then, abortion now. That’s the kind of love which our culture is dying for and calling out for, in which we have the opportunity through Catholic media and through all of the Catholic apostolates that are so proudly associated with Relevant Radio. That’s the kind of love, that’s the kind of tenderness, that’s the kind of gospel force which we have the possibility of unleashing in this world. And it’s no good for us to think that all of the great, epic things in the life of the Church happened long ago. Why should the conquests of Francis Xavier in the far east, the adventures of the early Jesuits…Why should not the conversions that Our Lady of Guadalupe wrought here on our continent…Why should those be simply for us, something that we should dimly imitate and be weakly inspired by? Why should they not be a prelude to what God is doing next? That’s the power of the Holy Spirit, and that’s what we’re called to believe, to exercise faith that God is as active or more active now as he was then.
It’s no good for us to live secondhand. It’s no good for us to be play acting in our faith. This is a time for saints. This is a time for great heroism. This is a time not for us to endure or undergo our lives, but truly to live them. On the campus of the University of Mary this fall, we just passed 4,000 students, and much of that growth is due to our association with Relevant Radio, who’s helped us to get the word out. And there are other smart universities who also are bursting at the seams, who have partnered with Relevant Radio. Places like Christendom and Dallas and Ave Maria. We know what’s going on. We know how to reach the people who want to be at places like ours.
Think about what 25 years of Relevant Radio has meant, in the same way that Francis and Ignatius and Peter were there in that student residence at the University of Paris in 1529. Think about Bob and John and Mark getting together and saying, we gotta bring Relevant Radio into existence. We need Catholic radio here in Green Bay. Think about Tom Vorpahl and Father Rocky. Think about Bishop Ricken and all that he’s done in support of this apostolate. Think of all of the different people and think of the fruits. It’s amazing. Almost 8,000 people at the Walk to Mary going to entrust their lives and their cares and their prayers and their intentions to Our lady of Champion, because they don’t want just regular help. They want good help at the shrine of Our Lady of Champion. Think about the other things happening in the midst of the church. Think about the SEEK gatherings of FOCUS, which will happen again in just a few weeks. 25,000 thousand college students from all over the country, every corner of this great land, gathering together in worship and praise to God. That’s amazing.
Think about the National Eucharistic Congress: 65,000 Catholics coming together in Indianapolis to strengthen their faith in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. These are wonders and miracles in our own time. The United States, in fact this very city, has just given a pope to the universal Church. Did we ever think we’d see it happen? Did we ever think we’d see it happen? Leo XIV grew up 21 miles from here, and in North Dakota, you could drive there in less than 20 minutes and in Chicago, you could get there in less than seven hours. It’s very close.
Relevant radio, 25 years into its existence, now reaches 300 million people. You know what I say about that? You know what you should say about that? That’s a good start, because there are 8 billion people in the world, and people need the Lord. It hasn’t changed. People need the Lord. They’re dying to know the Gospel. They’re dying to be set free from the truth which Christ gave to reveal to us who He is, who the Father is, who we are, what the world is all about, what human life is for, and eternal life so that we might have the hope of it in our hearts. This, everybody, is a moment for us which we have to seize. That’s why your support for Relevant Radio in all of the various ways that you rally around this cause is profoundly important. Jesus asked in Luke’s Gospel, when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith upon the earth? The answer to that question is up to you. And it’s up to you and me this very night.
Father Rocky Hoffman holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Mary, which is a high honor. It’s not, though, the highest of honors. I foresee a day if we are faithful, when it can be, when it can be St. Rocky Hoffman and Companions, and we’re the companions. Wouldn’t it be good, everybody, to go to heaven all together? That’s a plan. Let’s do that.
Let’s forget about all the other plans and designs of our life and let’s go to heaven all together. I had a Guadalupe moment in the early months of 2013. One of my closest friends in seminary, indeed, one of my closest friends in my life, is a priest of the archdiocese of Omaha. His mom had been sick for a long time, and finally she succumbed to her illness. So I went down and was present at the funeral. I watched my friend stand in the nave of this small country church, and he put his hand on his mother’s casket and he preached there a homily, a great sermon, a testament of faith. And then he led the procession as the casket was carried out of the church into the small churchyard cemetery nearby. About a month later, I got a card in the mail from him thanking me for coming down and being with him at that time.
And he wrote these words in the card. He said, “My mom was fiercely proud of you and all that’s happening at the University of Mary.”
And back in 2013, we were so little. We needed someone to be fiercely proud of us. I’ve come from the University of Mary tonight bearing a message for Father Rocky, for Tom Vorpahl, for Bob and John and Mark, and for each and every one of you who are associated with Relevant Radio in any way: The Blessed Virgin Mary is fiercely proud of you. She’s fiercely proud of the work that has been done in 25 years at Relevant Radio. And this is just the beginning.
¡Que Viva la Virgen Madre de Guadalupe, Que Viva!
Thanks, everybody.