Let us now have a peak at the mass of today with attention to its Scripture readings . . .

Peter Canisius . . .

The Scripture readings educate us, persuade us to adopt a certain attitude toward the business of being a Catholic.

Take recent offerings in the new and old masses.

The old mass on weekdays — pre-Vatican 2, sharply reduced in availability under Pope Francis — almost always features a saint.

Long ago, if the weekday mass was for a poor soul in purgatory, you had the black-vestment requiem mass. A sung mass, in Latin, of course, as at Holy Family Church in Chicago in the mid-’50s with a lone responder at organ in the loft.

Purgatory is a Vatican 2 reformation story in itself, by the way. It’s a word currently suffering abandonment syndrome. Almost nobody says it. We do pray, to be sure, for the repose of souls, asking that they rest in peace.

At funeral masses, sermons are mostly eulogy. Once I heard a priest touch on the after-life gingerly, explaining that the deceased, whom he knew well (as did I), would want it said. Did even this priest use the p-word? Not that I recall.

The new mass is dedicated very much to instruction, a longstanding staple requirement of reformers. In this Easter season, we have Acts of the Apostles, very good stories, giving a fascinating account of the church’s earliest days. As a reader at a weekday mass, I look out and see rapt attention. It does stay with you, building to an earliest-church-history crescendo which offers food for thought.

As to the name, it’s too often not a grabber. “Ordinary time,” no. Why number twenty-plus Sundays and weeks of the year, calling them ordinary? Reformers made a mistake with this mere numbering of things, like a bookkeeper checking accounts. Sure, you can number anything. Keep it orderly. How many Sundays after Easter, sure. But numbers are not going to get people excited unless it’s money or ball game scores among the countable.

Old style did names better. Take the Feast of — not just memorial — St. Peter Canisius, one of the earliest Jesuits, crudely dubbed Hammer of Heretics by some of us young Jesuits in our less ecumenical moments.

We had that wrong. The H of H so called was the eminent early Franciscan three centuries earlier, the saint who came to be the one most often called on to find things lost, St. Anthony of Padua! Nor was he a hammer of anybody, but a great persuader of the heretics of his day.

As for our man Canisius, his was quite a record three centuries later. Our friend Deacon John sums it up nicely:

Peter Canisius (1521-97) was drawn to the Society of Jesus by the preaching of Blessed [later Saint] Peter Faber, the first disciple of St. Ignatius. Peter Canisius realized that in the Germany where Luther had recently been preaching heresy, many Catholics had no clear knowledge of their religion.

Familiar!

He wrote a catechism that was of incomparable value to the heroic missioners of the Catholic Counter Reformation. He was a pioneer of the Catholic press, and founder of many Catholic colleges in Germany, Austria, and Bohemia.

For more about this hero, we turn to the encyclopedia called Britannica:

St. Peter Canisius . . . strong opponent of Protestantism. . . has been called the second apostle of Germany (. . . St. Boniface being the first) for his ardent defense of Roman Catholicism there. . . taught at the universities of Cologne, Ingolstadt, and Vienna. . . . founded colleges at Munich (1559), Innsbruck (1562), Dillingen (1563), Würzburg (1567), Augsburg, and Vienna.

And in his spare time . . .

Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, he delayed the advance of Protestantism by his participation in the religious discussions at Worms (1557) and at the Council of Trent and the Diet of Augsburg (1559).

He moved among the mighty . . .

He sought to renew the Roman Catholic Church in Germany by means of his friendship with the Holy Roman emperor and numerous magnates, by his zealous preaching in various German towns, by the extension of the Jesuit order, and especially by his desire to provide worthy and scholarly priests.

Making his mark wherever he went . . .

His German missions won him fast friendships with persons in all walks of life, including the emperor. He did important work in southern Germany and Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland, where in 1580 he settled in Fribourg and founded a Jesuit college (now the University of Fribourg).

A writer, by heaven . . .

His major work was the Triple Catechism (1555–58), containing a lucid exposition of Roman Catholic dogma. It became the most famous catechism of the Counter-Reformation, going through 400 editions in 150 years.(1521-97)

A man to remember. And to remember, he’s at your service, deputed by God, you might say, to hear you out. And help you out in all sorts of situations.

St. Peter Canisius, help us out.