“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art,” St. Pope John Paul II writes in his Letter to Artists, issued on Easter Sunday, 1999. As you will read in this issue of The Catholic Telegraph, art and beauty have a unique power to evangelize.

An actor, playwright and poet, St. John Paul II takes a broad view of what he calls “the divine spark which is the artistic vocation.” He remarkably says that “all men and women are entrusted with the task of creating their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”

In the earliest days of the Church, artists evoked Christ with symbolic images of fish, loaves, bread and the lamb. Art became more representational in the catacombs of Rome, often illustrating Jesus the Good Shepherd, as well as scenes from the Old and New Testaments. In the centuries since, St. John Paul II writes, “the biblical text has fired the imagination of painters, poets, musicians, playwrights and film-makers.”

The Bible itself is a literary masterwork, an entire library representing a whole panoply of literary genres – including poetry, songs, history and letters – in one volume. While that library was closed to all but the most educated for many centuries, visual art was not. As St. John Paul II notes, “in times when few could read or write, [artistic] representations of the Bible were a concrete mode of catechesis.”

Catechesis-by-art took place primarily in churches. Not only do stained-glass windows, statues and stations of the cross tell stories of our faith, now as then, so does the magnificent architecture of churches built from the time of Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century onward.  The striking architecture of many of our churches draws worshippers closer to God through its beauty.

Sacred music also draws us closer to God. Hymns have always been a part of Christian worship. “The faith of countless believers has been nourished by melodies flowing from the hearts of other believers,” writes St. John Paul II, “either introduced into the liturgy or used as an aid to dignified worship. In song, faith is experienced as vibrant joy, love and confident expectation of the saving intervention of God.”

Together, music, architecture and representational art (paintings, statues, stained glass) help immerse and evangelize the faithful who are present in a church for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

And thanks to technology, those who are unable to fully participate in Mass in person can watch it from home. Now many of our parishes livestream services, providing the opportunity for spiritual communion. We were blessed to have this option when our parishes were closed because of the pandemic.

However, watching the Eucharistic celebration online or on television is not the same as participating in what Vatican II calls “the source and summit of the whole Christian life” (LG 11). Now that our churches have reopened with strong health safety protocols in place, I urge all Catholics who are not at particular risk for the coronavirus to return to weekly participation in Mass during the upcoming season of Lent – if you have not already done so.

May the 40 days of Lenten penitential waiting remind us that Christ is always with us in our suffering and prepare us for the joy of Easter.

As we prepare for the celebration of the bicentennial of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati later this year, National Catholic Schools Week – Jan. 31 through Feb. 6 – offers an opportunity to reflect with gratitude upon the importance and success of Catholic education in the 19 counties of our local Church over the past two centuries.

Our visionary founding bishop, Most Rev. Edward D. Fenwick, took seriously his responsibility to educate his flock, preparing them for life both in this world and the next, and informing them about current events from the perspective of the Church. He therefore oversaw with apostolic vigor the founding of Cincinnati’s first Catholic school in 1825, a seminary in 1829 and The Catholic Telegraph in 1831.

That first school of 25 female students and two teachers has grown into our archdiocesan network of 107 Catholic schools with nearly 40,000 students from grades pre-K through high school and more than 1,600 teachers. Only a handful of other dioceses in the U.S. have more students in Catholic schools. While we celebrate this achievement, we also laud the more than 20,000 additional Catholic students in the archdiocese who receive instruction in the faith through parish schools of religion.

The Catholic schools in our archdiocese vary in many ways. There are elementary and high schools; co-ed, all girls and all boys schools; urban, suburban and rural schools; schools owned by parishes, the archdiocese, private boards and religious orders. What these excellent institutions have in common is their commitment to the holistic education and spiritual growth of each student so that graduates radiate the light of Christ, leading lives of virtue and helping to build a better and less divisive world.

This formation takes place in a community atmosphere that is welcoming and compassionate, as well as academically demanding. Our teacher-ministers model the faith to their students not just in the classroom, but in the entire Catholic school experience, including what happens in the hallways, in the cafeterias and on the playing fields. For this reason, I am pleased and impressed with the commitment of our school leaders and faculties to in-person learning during the ongoing pandemic, following the guidance of our Catholic Schools Office. Their dedication to their students is an inspiration.

Local and national Catholic schools have overcome many other challenges over the past two centuries. Even in the best of times, operating a school is a complex matter with many human and financial variables. The great legacy of Catholic education that we have in this archdiocese would not have been possible without the commitment and sacrifices of parents, volunteers, teacher-ministers, administrators, staff members, parishioners and religious orders over many generations. As archbishop, I am deeply grateful to all of them.

To radiate Christ means to witness Christ, not just to talk about Christ. Our Catholic school students know that, and they show it in the tens of thousands of volunteer hours that they collectively perform every year. In doing so they defend the life and dignity of the human person, which is the first principle of Catholic social justice. Just one example is the many school pro-life clubs that assist the work of pregnancy centers across the archdiocese.

Another form of witness is undertaken by the busloads of our students who have attended the March for Life in Washington each year to demonstrate their opposition to the unjust abortion regime imposed by the Supreme Court in its notorious Roe v. Wade decision of Jan. 22, 1973.  I am proud of our students who have made this arduous trip.

COVID-19 will change our schools’ participation in the March for Life, as it has changed so much. Our Catholic schools, however, have not changed in what is most important: the mission they have pursued since Bishop Fenwick opened the first Catholic school only three years after the foundation of the Diocese of Cincinnati. Let us all celebrate Catholic Schools Week!

Much of this difficult year has been spent in uneasy, uncertain waiting – waiting for businesses and schools to reopen, waiting for the development of a vaccine, waiting for life to return to normal and, for some, waiting for COVID test results. Perhaps most of all, we have spent many anxious months simply waiting to see what happens next.

Now the Church calendar brings us to a different kind of waiting. The season of Advent, which appropriately begins a new liturgical year, is a time of expectation and preparation for the coming of Christ – at Christmas and again at the end of the world. For the Christian believer, this is a time of happy waiting because we know what is coming, and it is the greatest of all gifts.

The wonderful traditions of the Advent calendar and the Advent wreath give us excellent ways to observe this blessed season in the home, which I strongly encourage. The Church also gives us several beloved feast days to celebrate during these four weeks – St. Nicholas on Dec. 6, the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8, and Our lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.

Advent comes during the darkest days of the year in the northern hemisphere. This is, however, the dark that precedes the dawn. The light of Christ is coming! We must be ready for it.

That is the message of St. John the Baptist in the Gospel readings for the second and third Sundays of Advent. John clearly knows who he is and what his mission is. He denies being the Messiah, or Elijah or the Prophet. Rather, he says he is “the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord” (Jn. 1:23).

The beginning of that same Gospel reading uses a different image for John the Baptist: “He was not the light, but he came to testify to the light” (Jn. 1:8). As Christian disciples, this is our mission as well – to radiate Christ, the light of the human race, and bring others into a deeper relationship with Him. The first person to present Jesus to the world was the Blessed Virgin Mary after accepting him into her womb. As a result of her “yes” to God’s will, “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn. 1:14).

The Incarnation is so important that Christmas is not just one day on the Church calendar, but an entire season that continues until the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated on the first Sunday after Epiphany. Even in the secular world, the social celebration of Christmas, marked by parties and visits with friends and family, is not relegated to just one day.

This year, one characterized by so many stresses and disruptions in our lives, we may find ourselves longing for “normal” Christmas celebrations – both at Mass and with our loved ones. However, it cannot be quite the same as we continue to struggle with the reality of the global pandemic. Churches that are usually packed on Dec. 24 and 25 may not be as full because of social distancing restrictions and the absence of those at risk for COVID. Choirs may be smaller. And in the social sphere, parties may be fewer.

However, what has not changed is far more important: God loves us so much that he sent His only Son as Emmanuel – “God with us” (Mt. 1:23) – to offer us peace, joy and the fulness of life. The celebration of that Good News is well worth the wait!

May you have a blessed Advent and a joy-filled Christmas. And if you are able to safely receive the sacraments but have not done so for several months or even several years, please come home for Christmas and experience the blessing and peace of the Christ child.

As we near the end of 2020, perhaps most of us are eager to see the completion of a troubling year that has brought great trials and deep pain to so many. And yet, even at this challenging time of COVID-19, job losses and civil strife, we have much for which to be grateful to God when we gather this month to celebrate Thanksgiving – whether in person or virtually.

In addition to our lives, we have the blessings of family, friends and faith. As Catholics, we also have Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. The very word “Eucharist” comes from the Greek for “Thanksgiving.” The absence earlier this year of public Mass, and the resulting separation from physical communion, makes us even more thankful for this incredible gift from God. Sometimes we do not fully appreciate what we have until we lose it.

Although our relationship with Jesus is personal, we celebrate the sacraments in the communal context of the Church. And, as we say in the Nicene Creed at Mass, the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” Catholic means “universal.” The Church spans the globe, united by Christ’s teachings and the leadership of the Holy Father. In the Latin Church, we are also bound together by the same liturgical norms and Canon law.

In November, commemorated since 1990 as Black Catholic History Month in the United States, we are especially grateful for the universal nature of the Church as reflected in the strong faith of black American Catholics. One of the reasons this month was chosen for the observance is that November 3 is the feast day of St. Martin de Porres. Born in Lima, Peru, in 1579, he was the first black person in the Americas to be recognized as a saint when he was canonized by Pope St. John XXIII in 1962.

American history and the history of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati have been graced with the lives of many other saintly black Catholics – women and men who radiated Christ, often in the face of injustice and discrimination, even from within the Church. Some of them are on the path to canonization. You will read about that and many other inspiring stories of black Catholics in this issue of The Catholic Telegraph magazine.

In the archdiocese we can point with special pride to Daniel Rudd, founder of the National Black Catholic Congress and of a black Catholic newspaper, The American Catholic Tribune. Although he was born into slavery in Bardstown, KY, in 1854, and died there, he spent many productive years in Cincinnati.  An active evangelist for the faith in the black community, he was quoted as saying the Catholic Church was “the only place on the Continent where rich and poor, white and black, must drop prejudice at the threshold and go hand in hand to the altar.” He also said: “The Catholic Church alone can break the color line. Our people should help her to do it.”

If we are to learn from history, however, it must be presented honestly. The Church was not free from the sin of racial discrimination in Daniel Rudd’s time, nor is it now. In its human dimension, the Church on earth still struggles to fully radiate Christ in respecting the life and dignity of each person. That is a continuing challenge for the entire Body of Christ, every one of us, not only those called to ordained leadership.

During this Black Catholic History Month, let us be thankful for the faithful witness of black Catholics over the centuries who embraced the Catholic Church and contributed mightily to it.