Some 1,500 attended Evening Prayer at Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis
On the eve of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s beatification, the faithful came together to lift their voices in prayer at a solemn Evening Prayer Service Sept. 23 at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis.
The hour and a half prayer service was at near capacity with more than 1,500 people in attendance, including Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, who presided; homilist Bishop Robert E. Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota; and Cardinal Louis Antonio Tagle, Pope Leo XIV’s papal delegate who will preside at the beatification Mass Sept. 24.
Joining them at the evening prayer service on the memorial of St. Padre Pio were Cardinals Raymond L. Burke, Robert W. McElroy, Blase J. Cupich and Seán P. O’Malley, numerous bishops, including Peoria’s Bishop Louis Tylka, priests, deacons, seminarians, men and women religious and laypeople.
Hymns, antiphons and canticles and music filled the cathedral basilica, led by the cathedral basilica’s Schola Cantorum, under the direction of Andrew Kreigh.
Bishop Barron, founder of Word on Fire, a global Catholic media organization that evangelizes through digital and traditional media, reflected in his homily on Archbishop Sheen’s life as a holy person, one who opened the door to the evangelization of the world through the electronic media of his time.
He lived in a time of extraordinary revival for the Church in the middle years of the 20th century, and was arguably one of the most influential figures during this renaissance, Bishop Barron said, with more than 30 million viewers who tuned in every Tuesday night to his television program, “Life Is Worth Living.”
Beyond his work of evangelizing through the media, Bishop Barron also said Archbishop Sheen reflected holiness in his life through three major components: a surrender to God’s will, embracing a sense of unworthiness and humility and answering the call to mission.
“Sheen himself would have said that a blessed holy person is someone who is a friend of Jesus Christ,” Bishop Barron said. “Over and again throughout his career, he insisted: Christianity is not an abstract philosophy or a set of moral convictions, but rather a relationship to a living person,” Jesus Christ.
Archbishop Sheen experienced a divine friendship with the Lord, through what Sheen himself once described as “a sense of the holiness of God, of God’s awe-full transcendence, of His majesty, beauty and power,” Bishop Barron said. “The authentic spiritual journey never begins, Sheen knew, with what I want, with my projects and plans and achievements, but rather always with the breakthrough of grace and the consequence surrender to what God wants to achieve in me and through me.”
He also had a profound sense of unworthiness, Bishop Barron said. And by embracing humility, he was sent to out on mission as a bearer of grace to others, he said.
“Blesseds and saints are for the Church,” Bishop Barron said. “What we do tomorrow does nothing to increase Fulton Sheen’s sanctity. It doesn’t make his place in heaven any higher. Rather what we do tomorrow effects the Church, for it brings this holy man in a powerful way before the attention of the world.”
Archbishop Sheen is the preeminent figure of the “new evangelization,” Bishop Barron said, tracing the concept from St. John XXIII’s vision of the Second Vatican Council as a missionary council meant to bring Christ’s light beyond the Church’s walls and through similar themes of evangelization espoused by St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis and now Pope Leo XIV.
While Archbishop Sheen participated in Vatican II and embraced its missionary themes afterward, his entire ministry had already emphasized evangelization that is “new in method, new in expression and new in ardor,” Bishop Barron said.
“Anyone who seeks fresh language to bring the Gospel to our culture, anyone who preaches the ancient word with a heart on fire, anyone who dares to use the media of communication available to us today is indebted to Fulton Sheen and finds in him a powerful heavenly friend and intercessor,” he said.
Father Justin Cinnante, a Carmelite priest from Tarrytown, New York, who was among dozens of communities of men and women religious represented at Evening Prayer, said that the making of a saint is a time of grace for the Church. Archbishop Sheen’s beatification was his second — he also was present for St. Padre Pio’s beatification in 1999 and canonization in 2002, both in Rome.
“Here, we’re celebrating a new blessed of the Church, and of course, people that are here will receive many graces,” he said. “I also believe the whole Church is going to receive many graces from this event, so I definitely wanted to be part of that — to pray with with the people of God here in St. Louis and to ask Archbishop Sheen’s intercession.”
Sister Catherine Holum of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal in the Bronx, New York, said her community has a special connection with Archbishop Sheen: Her community’s founder, Father Andrew Apostoli, served vice postulator of the sainthood cause of Archbishop Sheen from 2001 until his death in 2017. She and her fellow sisters would often hear stories from Father Apostoli, who was ordained by Archbishop Sheen in 1967, and felt very steeped in his sense of spirituality.
“We’re here really as his spiritual daughters and are just so excited about Archbishop Sheen’s beatification, which (Father Apostoli) was working on for so hard for so long,” said Sister Catherine, who also experienced one other beatification in her lifetime — St. John Henry Newman’s in 2010 in Birmingham, England.
Sister Maria Augustine, a Sister of Life from Suffern, New York, who attended Blessed Solanus Casey’s beatification in Detroit in 2017, said that witnessing someone on the path to sainthood is a moment of grace in the Church and an opportunity to bring our desires to God and ask for His intercession.
”I’m excited for the individual gifts that the Lord is going to pour out of each person’s heart and how that’s going to bless the Church as a whole,” she said. As Sisters of Life, “we’re always looking for witnesses who preach the Gospel in creative and new ways and with a boldness, because that’s needed in our time as well. I think Fulton Sheen provides such a great witness for us of what it means to like bring the drama of the Christian story to to the world, and to do that in a way that engages people where they are. We very much look to him as a witness for what it means to spread the good news.”
