Being Remembered: Homily for Thursday, April 30, 2026

If you think back to your ancestors, you probably only knew (or remembered) two or three generations. When we consider being remembered, it is something that does not suggest we will be remembered long. But there are those who are not well-known who did tremendous things, like Pope St. Pius V. Readings for today.

Being Remembered

Think back a little bit about your relatives. I’m sure you remember your parents. You may or may not have known your grandparents. You might know your great-grandparents. And there are a few lucky individuals who know their great-great-grandparents. Get beyond that, and most of us, at least I know I would be hard-pressed to even know the name of the next generation. Because I don’t even know the name of my great-great-grandparents.

The truth is that we are not really going to be remembered, likely, for a very long time. Unless we do something horribly wrong, like, let’s say, Al Capone. Or we do something tremendously good. Maybe like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. Today we celebrate a Dominican saint, Pope Saint Pius V. He’s not the most well-known of saints. I have to confess that before I became a Dominican, I didn’t know anything about him. I wouldn’t have known.

If you’d said Pope Pius V, I would have said, “Okay, yeah, one of those popes long ago.” Mentioned Dominicans today, Pius V, and we tend to think of our Priory in Chicago. Some saints are famous and well-known. Yesterday was an example, Saint Catherine of Siena, who has stood the test of time for her mysticism, for her political savvy, for her personality. Obviously, Saint Thomas Aquinas, we know. Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Maybe Saint John Baptist of La Salle.

But Pope Saint Pius V is not one of those individuals. And yet, he was a magnificent pope. There was a period of time, maybe it’s still true, that when the Council of Trent was mentioned, it was done so with kind of derision. As something that was old and passé. And we were ushering in Vatican II, the new and the joyous. But, in reality, Vatican II began with a statement. “We affirm everything that the Council of Trent says.”

The Council of Trent came at a critical time for the Church. I remember a Church history professor suggesting that if the Council of Trent had occurred 50 years earlier, the Protestant Reformation would have been much less. Because we acknowledge that much of what Martin Luther had complained about and what the Protestants had complained about were correct. Pope Pius V was the one who had to implement the Council of Trent.

In many ways, in our modern age, he’s like Pope Paul VI, who was really left with the job of implementing Vatican II. Now, the Church, at the time of the Council of Trent, was a mess. It was not in great shape. The clergy were not well educated. The Church was a Church of excess. There was all kinds of ways that the waning of the civil authority of the Church was disappearing.

And the Council of Trent did some really amazing things. It started seminaries, for example, so that priests would be educated. Pope Pius V brought his Dominican sensibilities to the Vatican. He ended nepotism, most especially before he was Pope, when he stood up against his predecessor, Pope Pius IV, who wanted to make his 13-year-old nephew a cardinal. He ended the excesses of the Vatican, leaning on his Dominican sensibilities of poverty.

He also worked to clarify the teachings of Trent in a way that would become understandable. But in so many ways, despite all of these great things he did, the Church ultimately came out. He wasn’t Pope for a terribly long time, maybe eight years, but there were eight very significant years in the Church.

It’s a reminder to us, I think, most of what we do is probably not going to get a lot of attention. We’re likely to be quickly forgotten as the next generation comes along. The Gospel tells us the most important thing that each of us should be known for is our love of Jesus. And that is exactly what motivated Pope Pius V, his love of Jesus. He was, by the way, an inquisitor before his election as Pope, something he actually wanted to do. But it was all motivated by his love.

And as much as he removed the excesses of the Vatican, he was quite generous to the poor, using those saved resources for those who were desperate. I suspect that each day, God could ask us, “Do you love me?” And God could give us something very specific that we’re to do to live out the message. To live out the question. Let us ask the Lord today for the grace to say, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

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