St. Columba - June 9th

President Obama on Muhammad Ali

"Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d 'handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail.'

But what made The Champ the greatest—what truly separated him from everyone else—is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing. 

Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.

In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him—the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was—still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.

'I am America,' he once declared. 'I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me—black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.'

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age—not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes—maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace." —President Obama

Muhammad Ali

Heroes and Saints: Pope John XXIII

Today marks the commemoration of Pope John XXIII, a marvelous witness and leader of the faith of Jesus Christ.

Almighty God, whose will it is to heal all division and discord among those who call upon the name of your Son: We thank you for the good will shown in your servant John, and we pray that we may always be ready to hear our fellow Christians with humility and a willingness to learn, and may also speak the truth in love, to the healing of faction and the renewed witness of your people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever. Amen.

Short biography below by Jame Keifer, posted at MissionStClare

Angelo Roncalli, the third of thirteen children, was born to a family of farmers 25 November 1881 at Sotto il Monte in northern Italy. At the age of twelve he entered the diocesan seminary at Bergamo and came under the influence of progressive leaders of the Italian social movement. He then went to the seminary at Rome on a scholarship, interrupted his education there to serve for a year as a volunteer in the Italian army, and returned to the seminary to take a doctorate in theology. He was ordained 10 August 1904.
He was appointed the secretary to the new bishop of Bergamo and with him learned forms of social action and gained an understanding of the problems of the working classes. Meanwhile he taught at the diocesan seminary.
In 1915 he was recalled to the army in World War I and served in the medical and chaplaincy corps. After the war he was made the spiritual director of the seminary. In 1921 he was called to Rome by the pope and made director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Italy.
He was consecrated archbishop in 1925 and sent to Bulgaria. At Sofia the capital he dealt with the problems of Eastern Rite Catholics in a troubled oriental land.
In 1934 he was sent to Turkey and Greece. There he fostered harmony among various national groups in Istanbul in a time of anti-religious fervor under Kemal Ataturk. Archbishop Roncalli introduced the use of the Turkish language in worship and in the official documents of the church and eventually won the esteem of some high Turkish statesmen. He made a series of conciliatory gestures toward the Orthodox and met with the Ecumenical Patriarch Benjamin in 1939. During World War II, Istanbul was a center of intrigue and espionage, and the archbishop gathered information useful to Rome and helped Jews flee persecution. His work in Greece, which was occupied by the Nazis, was less successful.
When he was sixty-four years old (1944), an age when most men are thinking of retirement, Roncalli was chosen by Pius XII for the difficult post of nuncio to Paris, where he worked to heal the divisions caused by the war. He travelled widely.
[A nuncio, where they exist, has the rank of an ambassador. While in Paris, Roncalli once said: "You know, it's rough being a papal nuncio. I get invited to these diplomatic parties where everyone stands around with a small plate of canapes trying not to look bored. Then, in walks a shapely woman in a low-cut, revealing gown, and everyone in the whole place turns around and looks -- at me!"]
At age seventy-two he was made cardinal and Patriarch of Venice and he had charge of a large diocese for the first time in his life. He quickly won the affection of his people, visiting parishes, caring for the working classes, establishing new parishes, and developing forms of social action.
In 1958, nearly seventy-seven years old, he was elected pope upon the death of Pius XII. He was expected by many to be a caretaker and transitional pope, but he astonished the church and the world with his energy and reforming spirit.
[Before the accession of John XXIII, when the official Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, quoted any statement by the Pope, on any matter whatever, it had a standard introduction: "These are the words of the Holy Father, as we were able to gather them from his august lips:" Under Pope John, this was changed to "The Pope said:" This and similar changes, not in themselves significant, helped to set the tone for the new pontificate.]
He expanded and internationalized the college of cardinals, called the first diocesan synod of Rome in history, revised the code of canon law, and called the Second Vatican Council to revitalize the church. This council was the major achievement of his life [and undertook] to renew the life of the church and its teachings, with the ultimate goal of the reunification of Christianity.
[The council marked the beginning of a new spirit of openness on the part of Rome toward Christians not of the papal obedience. The story is told that, when it was announced that Protestantleaders would be invited to the council as observers, the conservative Cardinal Ottaviani was horrified. He said:
"But Your Holiness, Protestants are heretics!"
"Do not say, 'heretics,' my son. Say, 'separated brethren.'"
"They are in league with the devil!"
"Do not say, 'devil,' my son. Say, 'separated angel.'"]
Moreover, as Bishop of Rome, he was unremitting in his care of his diocese, visiting hospitals, prisons, and schools. When he died 3 June 1963, he had won the widespread affection of Christian and non-Christian alike.
written by James Kiefer