Fulton Sheen’s Last Word

After so long a moral winter, imagine that God pulled a fast one on us, and that for one extraordinary moment last Thursday, he had given Blessed Fulton Sheen one last audience. As reward for his majestic life of preaching and prophesy, He had given Sheen his voice back, and allowed him to preach the homily at his own Beatification Mass. 

The divine transmogrification—Blessed Sheen into the body of Vatican delegate and homilist Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle—was a secret known only by God, Sheen, the angels, and all of the heavenly court.

The fifty thousand faithful gathered for the Beatification Mass in St. Louis—and the millions of Catholics watching from home—saw only the Filipino cardinal standing behind the ambo. Not one knew that Fulton Sheen had been given Tagle’s tongue.

Every word was Sheen’s—the bombast, cadence, and ferocious tone. So, too, was every gesture: every flourish, look of exasperation, sweep of the arm, and periodic flash of anger. As Sheen himself might have put it, God had permitted him every jot and tittle of Tagle’s script; He had allowed Sheen one last word to the world.

But God’s parting gift came with one condition: the wise prophet, Emmy-winning television star, and truth teller could choose just one subject on which to preach. The topic would be Sheen’s alone to choose. 

Unlike the twenty-three-minute homily Tagle had prepared to give last Thursday, Sheen was commanded by God to use the full weight of his prophetic voice and to get straight to the point.

The old orator did not dawdle over what his final word would be.

Humbly, Lord, I believe I might have just the thing, Sheen said, head bowed, the old cheeky grin hidden from God. Lord, we shall do our best not to waste the good people’s time. Let us get on with this divine charade!

A silence covers the overstuffed Dome at America’s Center as Sheen—appearing to all as Filipino Cardinal Tagle—seems uncharacteristically somber. He is unsmiling, and doesn’t seem himself as he steps to the ambo. Deep in reflection, he gazes out across the sea of worshipers and sees what they have come to see: thousands upon thousands of men and women have traveled long distances to pay tribute to the man they believe was the greatest prophet in American Catholic history.

For a long moment, Tagle is wordless.

Then the cardinal takes a step backward and turns to his immediate right.

One by one, he studies the faces of the nearly ninety bishops gathered beside him on the altar. He looks at each of them deliberately.

“Brother shepherds,” he asks evenly, “have you committed yourselves to a daily Holy Hour?

“If the answer is no, then why have you crowded this altar to honor the memory of a man who gave hour upon hour, day after day, year after year to kneel before the monstrance to allow Jesus to minister to his soul?

“Brothers, how many of us are like Sheen, who came as an empty vessel to the pure Fountainhead, so he might be inebriated each day—where honeyed words might pour into his soul to capture the hearts of millions? Brother bishops, do our words capture a world that has separated itself from God? 

“Is it because Sheen never separated himself from the Holy Hour that he managed to pull back the many thousands of souls whose sin had once separated them from the one true Church. It was at his Holy Hour that Christ revealed to Sheen the power of Satan and the evils of Communism, Modernism, secular humanism and of the revolution of sin that had separated the age of Christendom from mankind. 

“So each day, no matter what wound of sin Christ revealed to him, Sheen prayed it though and then railed prophetically against it. So fearlessly elegant was he in vanquishing the evils of his day, that Sheen became one of the world’s most famous men, a man now a single step away from sainthood.

“But of course it wasn’t just the sins of the world in which Jesus revealed to Sheen; the Savior spoke tender soliloquies into his open open, and shared His wisdom, merriment, and humble wit, which became for Sheen pieces gold to use for his thousands of radio and television shows and homilies, missions, and retreats. 

“Brothers, do we receive words from heaven in this way? Do we open our chapel doors each day and listen to all that Jesus wants to tell us? Do we keep Him company for an hour for the voice that calls us? As the dark rays of Communism spread again in America, and the cresting waves of disordered and unchecked appetites, the family breakdown and material and spiritual poverty broadens, do we seek the medicine of the Holy Hour—or do we forsake the Divine Physician because we’ve permitted bureaucracy, politics, and managed decline to reengineer our burden and duty to shepherd? 

“If we omit this sacred time before the Savior each day, does this not noiselessly signify, brother bishops, that we devalue the mystical work of what our hands will momentarily confect?

“Brother bishops, look upon this altar now, for in a few moments the angels will gather around it when bread will become the Sacrifice. Brothers, at this very moment I ask you in the name of God the Father: Do you believe—with every fiber of your heart, faculty of your mind, and belief of your soul—in this miracle set to happen? 

“Does your answer demand nuance?

“Then put yourselves on the dock of Judgment Day.

“Imagine that you stand before the One who gave you your priesthood. Imagine that the just Judge looks upon you asks you to answer just one question:

“‘Shepherd, did you kneel each day beside Me in My Garden of Anguish?’

“If you fumble this first question, another will follow like lightning. ‘Did you keep watch with Me each day as I mourned the millions upon millions of My children who have wandered far from the safety of My Church?’ If you stumble again, will Jesus not rise and begin to speak with the fire of Ezekial’s soul before the valley of bones. 

“Brothers, recall what Our Lord said in the Gospel of John: ‘I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.’

“Shepherds of the Church, we must one day answer Heaven’s just interrogator, who will ask of us: ‘Why have so many in my sheepfold been devoured by the world? Is it because they did not recognize the voice of the Shepherd—because shepherds failed to warm their hearts and find their voice before the fire of incomprehensible Light at the Holy Hour?’ 

“Isn’t this what our brother Fulton Sheen did each day, and once urged us to do? If we have not heeded his example, does this not explain why so many sheep today regard Christ’s Flesh as merely bread? Does the negation of our Holy Hours elucidate why so many Catholics pass by tabernacles without bending to the One sent to save them? Does it explain why many receive the Eucharist draped in mortal sin, why so many believers have become lukewarm and no longer tremble beneath God’s gaze as they extend a hand, proclaim, ‘Amen’, swallow Jesus, and often brush past ushers as they hurry toward exit doors?

“On behalf of God, I ask you shepherds: Who taught them these blasphemes? … Brothers, does this stem from the dearth of our Holy Hours?

“Shepherds of the Church, we do not know the day nor the hour. So I beg you now: Listen to the Ezekial-like prophet we beatify before it is too late: This is what Blessed Sheen foretold: When the shepherd is lazy, the sheep are hungry; when he sleeps, they are lost; when he is corrupt, they grow sick; when he is unfaithful, they lose their judgment. If the shepherd is not willing to be a victim for his sheep, the wolves come and devour them.

“Do your insides crumple within you?

“How do we begin to repair the abominations we’ve helped to create? Until it is clear to us, let us agree to offer ourselves as a sackcloth-and-ashes lamentation at the Holy Hour! What better medicine exists to repair the systematic distortion of our identity and save Christ’s hemorrhaging Church?

“Let us open the aperture to Sheen’s prophetic voice once more: Christ called us [bishops] as persons to the priesthood, bidding us to crucify ourselves, to de-egotize and to make ourselves empty vessels for the heavenly treasure.

“Brothers, will we allow our egos to dissolve and fade away before votive light? Will we approach the Savior as empty vessels, begging Him to fill us with the wisdom, humility, vigor, sacrificial love, boldness and fearlessness so needed today?

“Will we each agree to begin to nail our priesthoods to the Cross and work to begin to find the wandering sheep of our diocese? Will we begin to throw away our lives like logs meant for the fire for these souls? 

“Will we assume the burden and identity of our victimhood?

“Blessed Sheen knew this deeper shepherding dimension was to be purchased at a cost. Although he was a man perpetually stretched for time, he understood that it was at the daily Holy Hour where his priesthood gained its heartbeat, so it is where he went. 

“For more than a half century, he opened chapel doors—wherever he found himself in the world—and presented himself like the wise virgin seeking the oil to keep aflame his prophetic voice and duties of his office. Because his spigot to the sacred oil was never turned off, millions upon millions knew him by his voice, his books, and his zeal for the Lord, and their hearts became changed. 

“No one regarded Bishop Sheen as a bureaucrat, hireling, or politician? Brothers, can the same be said about us? If, by my question, you have found yourself looking at the floor, then look up. 

“Look toward this tabernacle and ask yourself, as I ask my own trembling soul: “Is it in me to begin again? Will I commit myself to kneeling before the lonesome Starved Man of the Cross, to listen to the dying voice of the One who once called me? Will I begin again, and allow the crucified Lord to penetrate my heart? Am I resolved to adore the suffering Savior through His hour, where He might permit me to see myself as He does, as a shepherd meant to guard souls from the sin of the world. 

“Our brother Fulton showed us the sacred solution to all that plagues us: It is the daily Holy Hour. This time with Jesus repairs our spiritual amnesia, pulls us from our addiction to comforts, animates our interior lives, and deepens our resolve to break past the incoherence of our fear of the world.” 

[Taigle turns from bishops and faces the congregation; and proclaims:] 

“Brother bishops, look into the faces of the thousands upon thousands who’ve heard the true stories of Sheen, of how he managed to save countless lost, disbelieving and lonely sheep. Perhaps this is a reason why so many fathers and mothers have traveled long distances today. Many of them have lost their children to the world, and they have been unable to find shepherds willing to help save them. 

“Brother bishops—will we commit on this day to begin to lay down our lives and do what we can to help these parents bring their children back into the fold? These mourning moms and dads have not seen our crosiers track mud in from the fields. They do not see our miters as crowns of thorns. The palliums we drape over our shoulders are not covered in Lamb’s blood. 

“Sheen warned us of how these parents would regard the shepherd unwilling to become like the Victim on the Cross: No deep conviction is aroused in the incredulous until they see the scarred hands and broken heart of the priest who is a victim with Christ. The mortified priest, the priest who is detached from the world-these inspire, edify and Christify souls.

“Bishops, let us resolve to work to soothe these parents’ anguish, and to commit to discerning God’s wisdom and direction before the monstrance. 

“Finally, we must look into the faces of the ocean of these one thousand priests—so many of whom are devoted to the daily Holy Hour. This holy habit has tethered them to Sheen; it is the reason many of these priests have traveled long distances to be here. 

“They have taken in earnest what Sheen once wrote to them: The house of the priest is not the rectory. He is at home only where Christ is present. There alone he learns the secret of love.

“Bishops, these are hope-filled eyes we see, men who’ve learned to become fathers in the silence of their parish chapel. Do you hear their unspoken plea now: Will you begin to die to yourself and work to become my father? … Will you make the Holy Hour and fight with me against the rising tide of darkness picking off the souls of my parish?

“Bishops, will we heed their unspoken voice as they plead with us now?: 

“Your Excellency, will you permit me—and if need be, even financially assist me—in building a Perpetual Adoration chapel for the souls of my parish?

“Will you work to make the center of your gravity the Eucharistic Face of Christ each day—where like Beloved John might be pulled deep into the mysteries of the Savior’s heart?

“Will you attach to your bathroom mirror what Sheen once prophesied us: ‘The priest who has not kept near the fires of the tabernacle can strike no sparks from the pulpit.’

“Will you push me to become holier, harder working, and a better father to the souls at my parish by urging me to deepen my devotion to God in the Eucharist?

“Will encourage me on major Feast Day to attempt to make a Eucharistic Procession through the streets of my parish boundaries?

“Will you find the time to occasionally visit me—and then make a Holy Hour with me at my parish. Then thereafter, be willing to speak to my flock about your devotion to God and their need for interior prayer?

“Will you allow me to build a small bedroom chapel in my rectory, where the Blessed Sacrament can keep me company when I grow tired and feel alone?

“Will you grant me full access to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass in the old form, or ad orientem, so that Christ—not man—may once again take His rightful place at the center of our devotion?”

“Bishop, will you devote a Holy Hour every now and then to the souls of my parish?

“Will you map out the remainder of your shepherding days before the monstrance, to help lead Christ’s Church back to significance and power and grace?

“Brother bishops—do you hear our sons’ unspoken pleas to us? They beg us to adore Jesus; and to forever recall that the priest is not his own. 

“And finally brothers, let us forget where our brother Fulton took his last breath—where he collapsed, died, and where, at last, he fell into the arms of the One he had loved all his life, beside the hearth-fire of the monstrance in his little chapel home.

“Brothers, I propose something on this day: that we honor Blessed Sheen now and forevermore by spending an hour each day dying in precisely this fashion. Let us return to the Holy Hour; let us live lives for God alone.”