The papal preacher preaches in Pearl City

Visiting Franciscan Father Raniero Cantalamessa speaks on the Eucharist and Jesus as Lord and friend

By Lisa Benoit

Hawaii had a rare opportunity last month to meet, befriend and listen to the man who preached to Pope John Paul II for the past 24 years.

Capuchin Franciscan Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the “preacher to the papal household” since 1981, stopped in Hawaii for a week last month on his way to Asia.

His visit was not a vacation. During his stay he gave a four-evening mission at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Pearl City, April 27-30. He also spoke to 27 island priests for two hours at St. Stephen Diocesan Center on April 29.

“When I told people I was going to Hawaii they told me I was lucky,” he said on the first night of his Pearl City presentation. “I was luckier than I thought because I found brothers and sisters.”

Father Cantalamessa, age 70 and a priest for 47 years, was also one of only two people to speak to the cardinal electors prior to the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. He promised to keep the content of his talk secret. During his Hawaii visit he learned that he had been reappointed to his position by the new pope.

In his Hawaii mission, attended by more than 300 people each night, he told the participants to “be joyful” when attending Mass and receiving the sacraments.

“We should be aware that the most joyful person is God the Father,” said the Capuchin friar, a man with a big presence in a small stature and a broad smile behind a graying beard.

Believing in the Eucharist

Speaking about the present “Year of the Eucharist” declared by the late pope, Father Cantalamessa said that it is a time for Catholics to renew their love for the “real presence.”

“We lose our wonder, our amazement for the Eucharistic,” he said during his homily at Mass Thursday night. “In a few moments, the real Jesus, who was born of Mary, who went around doing good — this Jesus who died on the cross — is coming among us. He will be present, more present than anything else. What would happen if we really believe that?”

Father Cantalamessa said that before he began preaching on the Eucharist around the world this year, the Lord taught him a lesson through a woman who attended Sunday Mass in his friary chapel. She stayed at the back of the church making no outward sign that she was Catholic. She did not make the sign of the cross, genuflect or receive communion. Only when the readings were proclaimed, did she pay attention.

One day after Mass, the priest went up to her and said, “Why don’t you come with us to receive Jesus? Jesus wants to have you.”

He said that woman, a nuclear physicist, looked at him in surprise. She told him she was searching for God. Father Cantalamessa gave her a booklet on the Eucharist.

“After a while, the woman returned and gave me the book and said, ‘Take this book Father. You did not put a book in my hands you put a bomb! Do you really believe what you have written in this book? That by the body and blood of a man dying two thousand years ago we are saved? Do you believe that? When I was reading I had to get up because my legs were trembling. If this is true, then everything will change.’”

Father Cantalamessa said that as he listened to her, he rejoiced but also felt full of shame.

“I had received the Eucharist Jesus a few moments before and my legs didn’t tremble,” he said.

Jesus is Lord

On the second day of his mission, Father Cantalamessa spoke about conversion. It comes, he said, when a person realizes that Jesus is Lord and Savior. He told the story of Paul, who first met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Jesus asked him, “Why are you persecuting me?”

“From this moment, Jesus became the life of Paul,” he said.

Paul’s experience is the supreme example of a conversion,” Father Cantalamessa said. It is also the only passage in the Bible in which Paul says “my” Lord, instead of “our” Lord.

“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,” he said. “I always ask people to let this solemn proclamation resound.”

He had the audience repeat two phrases: “Jesus is Lord” and “God raised him from the dead.”

He explained, “Whoever proclaims ‘Jesus is Lord’ is also proclaiming the Pascal mystery.”

“Whoever says ‘Jesus is Lord,’ is saying ‘I see Jesus as the one who has the right to give me orders,’” he said. “Jesus is my joy.”

He said that in the Bible, even the demons recognize that Jesus is the “Son of God,” but they never call him “Lord.”

“Proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a challenge,” he said. “It can change your life completely.”

Father Cantalamessa said that the first time he truly understood this challenge was at a Charismatic renewal rally in a Kansas City stadium in 1977. He has remained active in the Catholic Charismatic renewal movement ever since.

A friend in Jesus

The friar said that Christians must not only know Jesus as Lord but also as “friend.”

It was an idea that struck him during a Charismatic prayer meeting in Milan, after he heard the passage from the Gospel of John that read, “I no longer call you servants; I call you friends.”

“I passed the rest of the day saying Jesus Christ has called me friend,” he said. “I went home and I can remember the feeling. I felt like I could fly over the tops of the roofs.”

“When Jesus says you are my friend, these are not empty words,” he said. “He means what he says.”

Father Cantalamessa described friendship as having “one single soul in two bodies.”

“With a true friend, you share the most intimate details of your heart,” he said. “If there is something that you share with only one person in the world, that is your friend.”

He said that Jesus calls us “friend because he allows us into the Trinity as when a boy or girl brings a friend into their home.”

“To invite someone into the family, you open your heart to them,” he said. “Jesus has shown the way to joyful assurance. Jesus is the Lord and also our friend. No one will take away this privilege.”