Blessedness in America

Bld Fulton Sheen was beatified yesterday in The Dome at America’s Center, St. Louis, Missouri, by Cardinal Tagle on behalf of Pope Leo XIV.

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders

The year of Jesus Christ’s reign 2026 is a great year for these United States of America. In June the Bishops consecrated this nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the President “join[ed] in prayer,” and now we have one of the most beloved bishops in our whole history beatified – “America’s Apostle,” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.[1]

For these graces we thank our patroness, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, to whom this nation was consecrated in 1793. God bless America! 🙂

The Source of Sheen’s Strength

I’ve turned to Blessed Fulton Sheen in recent months due to the news surrounding him, but also because I need his help to work in media. As I wrote about last December, I’ve really struggled with this job – I’ve lost sleep and struggled with depression. I ask myself: how did Blessed Fulton Sheen work in media? In his Autobiography he has a chapter called “The hour that makes my day”:

On the day of my ordination I made two resolutions:

1. I would offer the holy Eucharist every Saturday in honor of the Blessed Mother to solicit her protection on my priesthood. The epistle to the Hebrews bids the priest offer sacrifices not only for others, but also for himself, since his sins are greater because of the dignity of the office.

2. I resolved also to spend a continuous holy hour every day in the presence of our Lord and the Blessed Sacrament…[2]

Later in the chapter he says that this is the dividing line for Christians:

The Eucharist is so essential to our one-ness with Christ that as soon as Our Lord announced It in the gospel, It began to be the test of the fidelity of His followers. First, He lost the masses, for it was too hard a saying and they no longer followed Him. Secondly, He lost some of His disciples: “They walked with Him no more.” Third, It split His Apostolic band, for Judas is here announced as the betrayer.[3]

He goes on: “The holy hour became like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul unfettered atmosphere of the world.”[4] And thus this great man drew his strength from Christ in His Real Presence every morning.

Thanks be to God, so many of us our deeply blessed to have Our Lord Jesus Christ present in our midst in the Holy Tabernacle, in which we can find rest and refuge at many times throughout our day. I think of Bishop Athanasius Schneider – his mother had to go ten years without priests, and when he grew up under the Soviets, the Masses were extremely infrequent for years.[5] And here in North America so many of us are so deeply blessed to have His Real Presence nearby. Glory to God for His mercies!

Fulton Sheen’s Interior Life

A few years ago I met Mr. Al Smith who has worked for years with the Fulton Sheen beatification. He recently put out a text summarising Fulton Sheen’s interior life as a guide to the Holy Hour and mental prayer in general. This text has really blessed me, and maybe it will bless you too.

Archbishop Fulton J Sheen… often reminded souls that the holy hour is not primarily the hour when we look at Christ, but the hour when Christ looks at us. In that gaze, excuses fall away, masks dissolve, and the soul is quietly healed…. for Sheen, prayer was not a performance and not a dialogue to be managed. It was a surrender to being seen. To sit before the Eucharistic Lord—or to contemplate the Holy Face—is to place oneself under the loving gaze of Christ and to allow that gaze to do its work period we do not need to explain ourselves. We simply remain.[6]

I talked to Mr. Smith on a podcast about the interior life of Fulton Sheen and Smith talked about how the Archbishop was a third order Carmelite. Sheen believed that the real movers of this world were the little ones who are humbling beseeching the mercy of Almighty God. They are the hope of this world.

Fulton Sheen against the Errors of Russia

I picked up one of the texts put out by TAN in their Signature Set: Communism and the Conscience of the West, as part of my book on Russia with co-author Maxim Grigorieff.

This is important because Archbishop Fulton Sheen became famous at the moment when America was the most Catholic in its history. That’s why I was astounded to read these comments of Fulton Sheen in 1948:

Most people are afraid to face the unpalatable fact that not a single positive major objective for which this war [World War II] was fought has been achieved. Few realize that barbarism is not only outside us, but beneath us; that science, by making us spectators of reality, has blinded us to the necessity of being actors, and that the atomic bomb, by putting human power in our hands, has hidden weakness of our hearts.[7]

This is a remarkable thing to say in 1948, when Americans everywhere were proclaiming the greatness of America. Our nation is indeed great, but Archbishop Fulton Sheen understood America’s fatal flaws. He was a great patriot who loved America but loved America enough to call America to conversion.

In the text he sharply distinguishes between true and false Liberalism – this is a distinction that is vital, yet is often over looked.  He then deftly analyses Communism, and then, in the final chapter, lays out the real battle lines:

Soviet Russia is not the sole danger to the western world; tather is it the despiritualization of the western world to which Russia gave political form and social substance. World War II came according to Our Lady of Fatima because there was no amendment in the hearts and souls of men…. the western world is scandalized by the Soviet system, but this is basically because it sees its own individual atheism socialized and put into practice on almost a cosmic scale… It is the special responsibility of the Christian to discern in two world wars in 21 years the judgment of God on the way we live… The conversion of Russia is the condition of World Peace, but Russia’s conversion is conditioned upon our own reconversion.[8]

The man of God understood the signs of the times and wasn’t afraid to say it. He then spent all his energy calling for the conversion of Americans (and the world) to Christ – while funding mission work worldwide. And he brought many souls to their knees, including our own, since his voice still echoes. What a blessing to have the preaching of this man of God littered across YouTube!

Therefore I came to St. Louis with a group from my parish to witness this historic moment in American history, giving thanks to God for His mercies.

The Beatification

The event was held at The Dome, the former NFL stadium for the St. Louis Rams. The facility was packed and multiple concessions ran out of food after many us waited in line for food for upwards of an hour. A large room was packed with vendors, but another large room housed the Blessed Sacrament exposed.

The Mass was three hours long, after a massive clerical procession of thirty minutes. The liturgy began as normal, but after the Kyrie the rite paused and the Bishop of Peoria (Fulton Sheen’s home diocese) read a formal request to Cardinal Tagle, the Papal respresentative, for the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God. A brief biography was also read, with the account of the miracle in which a newborn baby was raised to life by Fulton Sheen after being dead for 61 minutes.

In response to these formal gestures, Cardinal Tagle read the papal decree of beatification of Fulton Sheen in Latin, which was then read in English. Then the large icon was revealed of Fulton Sheen with a halo holding a piece of chalk – while a video feed showed the same thing revealed at his relics in Peoria.

The crowd cheered.

The new icon of Blessed Fulton Sheen

It was a happy moment for Catholics across America and the world. (His feast day was fixed for December 9, which was his birthday into eternity (as well as the existing feast of St. Juan Diego). Within the Octave of the Patroness of these United States – before the great feast of the Empress of the Americas, with the oath against bad movies. This Octave has so much American sanctity!)

After the formal decree, the Gloria was sung and then the Collect for Fulton Sheen. The first two readings were proclaimed in Spanish, then the Gospel was in English, the final commission from St. Mark.

His Eminence rose to deliver the sermon.

Cardinal Tagle gained a reputation as a “Francis man” under the prior pontificate, but his sermon was a sober call to the interior life of true mission work, puctuated with several good jokes about America and Illinois.

After this, thousands of faithful recited the Nicene Creed in the former football stadium, and then the intercessions proceeded in half a dozen languages. The Ordinary was entirely in English, but Communion chants included beautiful arragenements of Adoro te devote and Anima Christi. Traditional hymns filled in every other place, like “Holy God We Praise Thy Name” and “Now Thank We All Our God.”

All in all, it was a glorious and happy event for all. I could feel the exuberance of Fulton Sheen himself, with that twinkle in his eye he always has. We’ve got this awesome apostle from America, now raised to the altars.

It’s a good day to be Catholic.

JESUS IS KING!