Blessed are the ... Blessed

Blessed are the ... Blessed

 

 

Last Thursday, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was beatified by Cardinal Luis Tagle in a Mass at the Dome in the America’s Center in St. Louis. Known affectionately as “God’s Microphone” and “America’s Bishop,” Sheen was a household name as he came to prominence in the 1930s and '40s with his popular NBC radio show The Catholic Hour and later Life is Worth Living and The Fulton Sheen Hour on NBC Television in the '50s and '60s. 

Sheen famously drew better ratings than comedian Milton Berle, who—in light of that fact—noted that “at least I’m losing my ratings to God.” Not exactly, of course, though perhaps he was more on point when he admitted that Sheen had better writers: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

The bishop's media prominence has been the subject of many historians and cultural analysts of the mid-20th century. As a boy, I, for one, knew about the cultural force he was—even though I had never seen his show and despite the fact that he had died when I was still pretty young. He was that big. In our personality-driven, star-struck society, it would be easy to see last Thursday’s beatification as the result of Sheen’s fame and media presence. 

But that’s not why he is now recognized as being among the “blessed.” It was because of his personal holiness, his openness and receptivity to God’s grace in his life, which enabled him to be among the elect in Heaven. 

Beatification, the process by which a person is declared “blessed,” is the third of four stages a person goes through before being formally recognized as a saint worthy of veneration by the universal Church. Coming after a deceased person has had the cause of his or her sainthood opened (at which point a person is titled a “Servant of God” [like Dorothy Day of Catholic Worker fame or Fr. Edward Flanagan of Boys Town]) or having their demonstrated “heroic virtue” proved (at which point he or she would be titled “venerable” [like Fr. Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, or Fr. Patrick Peyton, founder of the Family Rosary Crusade]), the declaration of “blessedness” is a formal recognition that the person is in Heaven. Literally being beatified is an affirmation that the person so recognized is enjoying the “beatific vision” of God, contemplating His divine essence directly—“face-to-face” we say—and sharing in the perfect happiness of the Blessed Trinity. 

Having been formally beatified, Blessed Fulton now has a feast day—December 9—which, according to custom, is also the date of his death. Or, perhaps more accurately, the date of his birth into eternal life. Unlike canonized saints, the feast day of blesseds like Sheen will only be formally celebrated in their religious orders or local churches; in the case of the bishop we Americans will recognize his—along with St. Juan Diego’s—feast day in Masses throughout the country. Our fellow Catholics in Canada, Tanzania, Portugal, and the Philippines will not.

We will venerate Blessed Fulton Sheen because he led a life of heroic virtue: he is “blessed” because he was—like all of us—first blessed by God with his unique talents and abilities.  Talents and abilities he whole-heartedly offered back to the Lord.  

The Church’s rather rigorous canonization process exists, not just to affirm that a person is in Heaven, but also that she/he is worthy of emulation. We faithful are indebted to him—especially given that we live in an age where so many have fallen away from the Faith—for his ability to see, in what was to him modern technological advances, forums through which he could spread the Gospel. Even before he was declared “venerable,” among his countrymen Sheen had already been the subject of imitation and a source of inspiration to many. He used the emerging world of radio broadcasting—and later television—as a way of sharing the Catholic Faith not only to his co-religionists, but also to many other people of goodwill. Countless Protestant and Jewish viewers spoke of how they would watch and learn from Bishop Sheen on Tuesday nights. With the expanding world of cable television, Mother Angelica, taking inspiration from Bishop Sheen, began EWTN. Father—now Bishop—Robert Baron saw in the World Wide Web a forum through which he could evangelize, and he was followed by such luminaries as Fr. Casey Cole, OFM and Fr. Mike Schmitz, to name but a few. Matt Fradd and others have “baptized” the podcasting world. And of course, there are those of us who have found in the blogsphere an opportunity to try and share the Gospel as it relates to our everyday lives.

All of us trying to evangelize are indebted to the example of Blessed Fulton for showing us the way.

St. Ignatius—as I have often repeated in these pages—encouraged his followers to “set the world on fire” with love of Jesus. Fulton Sheen found a way to do that, and his life should encourage all of us to find the way best suited to our interests, talents, and experiences to share the Good News with those around us.

And if, like Blessed Fulton, we allow God‘s grace to work through us and transform us into His good servants, whether the Church formally recognizes us or not, we too will find ourselves among the Blessed in heaven.

A. M. D. G. / B. V. M. H.