NEWLY beatified American Archbishop Fulton Sheen exemplified a missionary life rooted in communion with Jesus Christ and solidarity with the poor rather than fame and prestige, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said during Sheen’s beatification Mass on Thursday, Sept. 24, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Tagle, the papal representative to the beatification and pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, said Sheen showed that authentic evangelization required both a personal encounter with Christ and service to the marginalized.
Addressing some 50,000 pilgrims at The Dome at America’s Center, Tagle structured his homily around two forms of communion exemplified by Sheen: communion with Jesus and communion with the vulnerable.
Communion with Jesus
Tagle described a missionary as a “storyteller” whose task is to preach Christ rather than oneself.
“To preach your own wisdom rather than that of Jesus is falsifying the word of God, according to St. Paul, and it is not mission. It is not blessedness,” he said.
Tagle recalled an encounter in which Pope Pius XII asked Sheen how many conversions he could claim as his own. Sheen refused to keep count, wary of spiritual pride, and instead described himself as a “porter” who led people to the house of God.
Tagle also recalled Sheen being asked by a friend why he pursued his vocation.
“I was called to tell this story, the Gospel, the story of Jesus. [I’m never tired] of telling it, [I’m never tired] of improving my telling of it. I love my calling,” Tagle quoted Sheen as saying.
Tagle urged members of the clergy to approach their vocation with the same humility.
“Blessed are you, storyteller of Jesus, encountered in his word, in the Eucharist, in the holy hour, and in his body, the church,” he said.
Communion with the vulnerable
Tagle then turned to the Christian mission of encountering Christ through direct service to the poor and marginalized, warning against preaching that becomes detached from the lives of people.
“To use preaching as an excuse to avoid concrete persons and to be blind to God’s action in them is not mission,” Tagle said.
“To preach the gospel from a posture of self-righteousness that prevents you from empathizing with other people’s brokenness is not [a] mission. It is not blessedness,” he added.
Tagle recalled Sheen’s address to the Second Vatican Council in 1964, in which the American prelate drew attention to global economic inequality.
Sheen observed that prosperity was largely concentrated above the 30th parallel while much of the world’s poverty was found below it.
“As only a wounded Christ could convert a doubting Thomas, so, only a church wounded by poverty can convert a doubting world,” Tagle said, quoting Sheen.
“Blessed is the missionary who digs deep into the heart of the poor to meet Jesus there,” he added.
Sheen served as auxiliary bishop of New York and bishop of Rochester and was later named archbishop of the titular see of Newport in Wales.
He became one of the best-known Catholic figures on American television through “Life Is Worth Living,” which began in 1952, and “The Fulton Sheen Program,” which began in 1961.
Sheen won the 1952 Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality for “Life Is Worth Living.”
The miracle attributed to Sheen’s intercession involved James Fulton Engstrom, an infant who showed no signs of life following complications during a home birth in 2010. The child regained a heartbeat after 61 minutes. Enzo Miguel D. Mejia
