Sermon Review: Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (New York City)

Old Saint Pat’s relies mostly on the sun coming through the stained-glass windows for light. This afternoon it’s streaming right through the face of St. Mary in a panel on the right side of the church—helped only by real candles, which a friend affectionately called “old school,” since many churches today have replaced them with plastic, electric ones. The statues of saints surrounding the pews—St. Therese, St. Anthony, a sorrowful St. Mary holding a rosary—are all uniformly beige and beautiful. Behind the altar, statues of the twelve apostles stand attentive, on both sides of a large painting of the Risen Christ leaping from the tomb. The stained-glass above adds a splash of twilight blue—that sharp color so rarely found in nature, except in the sky during the final minute or two before sundown—to the otherwise monochromatic old church.

The name Old Saint Pat’s is short for Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and it fits perfectly. Built in 1815 at the corner of Prince and Mott Streets—in the midst of New York’s ritzy SoHo neighborhood yet near the Italian immigrant families who still consider this home—the church served as the cathedral of New York until the current St. Patrick’s Cathedral (on 50th Street and Fifth Avenue) was completed in 1879. Built in the heart of old New York, this church was the setting for the baptism scene in the first Godfather film. Monsignor Donald Sakano is the pastor.

The entrance hymn matched the venerable setting: All people that on earth do dwell; sing to the Lord with cheerful voice . . . . Know that the Lord is God indeed; without our aid he did us make; we are his folk, he doth us feed, and for his sheep he doth us take . The antique phrasing may feel stunted at first to the congregation—“Without our aid he doth us make” doesn’t roll off the tongue, exactly—but by the end of the second stanza it fits.

The first reading tells the story of Elijah and the old widow who has only has enough flour and oil left for one meal for herself and her son, but she gives up the last bit she has to prepare a meal for the traveling prophet; the gospel tells of the widow who only has two coins left but who gives up those two coins in the collection for the poor. Is it a metaphor for our times?

Fr. Jonathan Morris, the church’s 37-year-old, warm-faced parochial vicar, ascends the pulpit. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Fr. Morris is known beyond Catholic circles as a contributor and television news analyst for Fox News Channel, and formerly an advisor in the making of Mel Gibson’s motion picture The Passion of the Christ. He also published a book last year called The Promise: God’s Purpose and Plan for When Life Hurts. He looks out to the congregation—mostly young adult to middle-aged parishioners—and invites us to stand in the place of the widow.

“We’ve all had times, haven’t we, when we’ve had to ask, “God, what do you want me to do? . . . ” Fr. Morris knows how to pause, and he does so for just the right amount of time, reading the faces of the congregation. “God, what am I here for in the first place?” When one has just enough food left for one meal, or just two coins left to one’s name, one might ask oneself that. And we’ve been there, too. What am I here for in the first place? What’s my vocation ?”

A widow who has lost her husband may have a moment when she has trouble remembering, a moment of shaken faith. But it’s even in those moments, Fr. Morris tells the congregation, that we need to put all in. “Don’t ask how much,” he says. “Give everything.”

He answers his own question. “What does God want of us? To give everything of ourselves, faithfully.”

And maybe Fr. Morris relates to the widow more personally than he lets on. Its hard to imagine what it must have been like for he and his brothers in the Legionaries of Christ, almost a year after their founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, was found to have been involved in a disturbing, still-unresolved scandal. Like the widow—who has lost the visible reminder of her invisible vocation of marriage, her husband—they’ve lost the virtuous image of their founder, a moment of shaken faith.

But Fr. Morris urges: Stay faithful.

“A wife may wonder, should I stay married? A priest may wonder, should I stay a priest?” As the widow in the first reading did, he stresses, we must press on, even when we can’t see past our next meal. It takes faith on our part, and we will find, as Fr. Morris ends his sermon, that “God is faithful to his promises.”