Photo Caption: Msgr. Stanley Deptula, executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, delivers the homily at the Sept. 9 Mass celebrating the advancement of Archbishop Sheen’s sainthood cause.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is the full text of the homily by Msgr. Stanley Deptula at the Sept. 9 Mass of Thanksgiving celebrating the declaration of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as “venerable.” Msgr. Deptula is executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, director of divine worship for the Diocese of Peoria, rector of St. Mary’s Cathedral, and pastor of St. Bernard’s and St. Peter’s parishes in Peoria.

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One of the more enduring and endearing stories from Fulton Sheen’s childhood here in his home parish in the Cathedral of St. Mary’s, was a terrifying moment when as a young boy he was serving in the presence of the intimidating Bishop Spalding, and a glass cruet slipped from his fingers and shattered on the marble floor. A terrifying moment in the young man’s life.

Well Fulton Sheen, I have a found moment yet more terrifying — preaching in the cathedral in the presence of two bishops!

I wish to also add my personal welcome to the bishop who ordained me here in this cathedral 16 years ago. He was a faithful Bishop of Peoria and is a great Archbishop of Newark and an early supporter in the very beginnings of the Sheen cause. He gave initial support to the very idea that the Diocese of Peoria would advance the cause of Fulton Sheen’s beatification. So join me again in thanking Archbishop Myers for his support.

(Applause.)

Many of you here today will remember that other great event, another great Mass five years ago, when similarly in the procession with Positio several other young servers carried, two servers per box, the original documents that were then loaded up and shipped to the Vatican. That work, these volumes of the life and legacy of Fulton Sheen, also honors the tremendous work and dedication of our historical and theological commission, countless secretaries and support staff, and in a profound way the excellent work of Msgr. Richard Soseman and I’d like thank him for his good work on this cause.

(Applause.)

And now that your applause muscles are all warmed up, we truly honor today and give thanks to God for the courage, the hard work, and the perseverance of the man who believed that Fulton Sheen, priest of this diocese, was the kind of hero we need for our local church, for our country, and our world. Today, Bishop Jenky, we thank you for your hard work.

(Applause.)

And as we’ve said on other occasions here, may God who has begun this good work, truly bring it to completion.

(Applause.)

‘MIRACLE’ OF TRANFORMATIVE LOVE
For many of you like myself, the morning of June 28 of this past year began much like any other morning. In fact for several weeks, we had heard rumors that the declaration of venerable was imminent. And every morning I’d wake up, shut off my alarm clock and pick up my cellphone to see if any emails had come in from Rome in the early hours of the morning.

But that morning I decided, you know what, I’ve been obsessing over this all these weeks, I won’t even look at my phone, have an extra cup of coffee, and say an extra couple of prayers. And I grabbed my phone on the way out to Mass. And I can’t even remember how many phone calls I had missed, emails and texts, from around the world. And the rest of the day, the next several days, were just a blur of excitement, celebrations, phone calls, and a lot of media attention.

And not just from the Catholic media. The secular media from around the country were very interested in the historic figure and what it meant that Sheen should be declared “venerable.” Then, Bishop Jenky and myself and a number of our other leaders kept giving all these press interviews, and it was really clear — again especially with the secular press — that what they really wanted to talk about was “the miracle.”

In fact it seemed they weren’t even all that interested in the life, the virtues, and the process of Venerable Fulton Sheen but they were kind of caught in these incredible stories of healing, raising babies from the dead. All they wanted to talk about were the alleged miracles. In fact, they are amazing, incredible stories. But that’s not really what we’re celebrating.

I’m afraid we’re beginning to lose focus on the life and legacy of Venerable Fulton Sheen. And in fact, the whole process of investigating those alleged, miraculous events, is just beginning to unfold in the Vatican. We need to pray and wait and allow the church to do what she does to discern eternal realities.

It also seems that the world in general wants to get caught up on the wonderful. Either it is the crass secularists who like to look at the miraculous as another means to mock open religion. To see miracles as some vestige, some medieval relic, of pre-modern, pre-rational state.

The other side are those who would run around the world chasing any kind of of magical event.

But when the church declares something miraculous, when God works a miracle, it is an expression of his love.

Of course our divine Savior himself had these kind of troubles in his own life. As we heard in today’s Gospel, time and again, he strongly admonishes his believers “Don’t tell anyone about the miracles” for fear they would accuse him of doing the work of the devil, or would want to carry him off and make him some kind of secular, kingly ruler.

Jesus makes it clear that when he works some mighty deed it is truly too wonderful for human reason and too deep for human language. Jesus does these miraculous works as a response for faith to deepen. In fact there are a couple of times when Jesus can’t do mighty works because of the lack of faith of people.

Given that, perhaps we are here to celebrate a miracle — the miracle of God’s transformative love. God’s transformative love in the life of Fulton Sheen. God’s transformative love for you and me. God’s love for sinners. For St. Thomas Aquinas would remind us that by original sin we all deserve death and damnation. When you compound on our personals sins, those personal times when we reject God’s love it is truly a wonder that God loves us. There is no reason for God to love me. But I know that he does.

And that is a miracle.

WHY “HE COULD ROAR LIKE A LION”
God’s love was emphatically imbued into Fulton Sheen through the sacraments. On the day of his baptism at St. Mary’s Church in El Paso, when he was confirmed and received his first holy Communion here in his parish church, and on that day prostate on the cathedral floor when Fulton Sheen was configured to Jesus Christ the High Priest. In those moments he received that sanctifying grace, that unearned expression of God’s love.

But those moments were reinforced. Fulton Sheen cooperated with that grace, and that grace was compounded in his soul, and truly like Our Lady came to be magnified throughout his whole existence. We know on the day of his ordination he made that promise to spend one hour a day in Eucharistic adoration. It could have just become a passing passion, the first flower of the zeal of a young priest. But not with Fulton Sheen. The words promised, commitment and relationship of love deepened throughout his life.

So that when we look at Fulton Sheen, the brilliant scholar . . . he probably would have been famous in the 20th century if all he was was a writer and a university lecturer. But in that incredibly brilliant intellect he took eternal truths and made them accessible to people like you and me. He could do that because he spent an hour a day listening to Him who is the way, the truth and the life. And that is what we celebrate today. That’s the model of virtue our world needs today.

In a world that triumphs subjectivity and the infallibility of opinion polls Fulton Sheen begs us to listen to the truth. Fulton Sheen was a courageous preacher. For many of us, especially those of us who are ordained, and any of us who love this great country of the United States, Fulton Sheen was a lion’s voice roaring out against the evils encroaching on his own day. Fulton Sheen did not hesitate to take on dictators and presidents. But he could roar like a lion from the pulpit because he listened to the small, still voice of that merciful and just king of the universe.

If we wish to speak and act with courage then we too must be configured to Jesus Christ and dwell with him and listen to him and it is in that union with Jesus that we too in our own day will find the courage to defend, and to love our country and our world.

I believe that Fulton Sheen who was so well known for his sense of humor, for quick wit, for jokes often at his own expense, the reason so he could laugh so well, so heartily, is because every day he knew that God was the only thing really worth taking seriously in life.

“HE REALLY LOVED JESUS”
Fulton Sheen was a great missionary. And not just in that formal day when he was national director of the Propagation of the Faith. Even as a young priest who was assistant at St. Patrick’s Church on the south side of Peoria, his priestly heart burned with missionary zeal. And he went door to door, inviting people to church, inviting the fallen away back to church, and in less than a year he transformed that parish. A sign of things to come.

And that great missionary activity, that tireless desire to preach the good news to all nations, it was evident in a young priest up to his last dying day was because he really believed in Jesus. He really loved Jesus. And he knew that Jesus loved him. And he wanted to share that love with the world.

This is what we celebrate today. This is what our world needs. This is what you and I need. It’s a dark place outside these cathedral walls. The world needs the light of the Gospel. The world needs to be reminded that God loves us. The only way we will do that is if we, like Bishop Sheen, dwell in the Eucharistic heart of Jesus who burns with love even for sinners.

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it hasn’t even dawned in our imagination the good things that God wants to do for those who love him and for those who allow his love to transform their very lives. And we look to Fulton Sheen as a hero of our faith for his virtue, for his sanctity, for the way that he allowed God’s love to transform him.

And that sounds pretty miraculous.