D-Day and Christmas Day wouldn’t seem to have much in common. But as Father John Riccardo pointed out recently in Columbus, both days were important in history because they were moments of liberation.
“Soldiers from the Allies risked their lives to come to France in June 1944. Why were they there? Not because they’d heard the beaches were beautiful and the coffee was good or because they wanted to see the Mona Lisa,” he said.
“They were there to fight because they wanted to liberate the people of France and all of Europe from a tyrannical dictator. Their mission of liberation was clear.
“Now imagine a scene nearly 2,000 years earlier in a cave in Bethlehem. A baby is born to a young Jewish woman named Mary and her husband, Joseph. Why was that baby there? Because He also was on a mission. He was there to liberate all of humanity from the power of sin. As great as the news of D-Day was to the people of France, this news is infinitely better.
“But somehow there seems to be no clarity on that. People haven’t heard the Gospel in this way, in the context of telling a story in this way,” he said. “Everybody sees reality through a different lens.
“One day, I met a woman who was beautiful and seemed to have everything. She came to me because inside, she felt her life was a mess. I asked if I could take a moment to tell her about the lens through which I view the world. I told her of God’s love for her, and five minutes later, she was crying and saying, ‘That’s not the God I knew growing up. I’ve never heard that before.’
“I can’t impose my view of the Gospel on you, but I can propose a way of seeing that leads to greater hope,” said Father Riccardo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit who is a nationally known speaker and author and host of the EWTN program Christ Is the Answer, heard weekdays on St. Gabriel Radio in Columbus and southern Ohio.
The way of viewing Jesus as he mentioned is the basis of his book Rescued: The Unexpected and Extraordinary News of the Gospel, which forms the basis for The Rescue Project Live!, a one-day event combining five talks by Father Riccardo, small-group discussion and Mass. Father Riccardo hopes to take these events nationwide. The first of them took place Saturday, June 18 in the Celeste Center of the state fairgrounds.
A key moment of the program came when Father Riccardo described Jesus as an “ambush predator.” He said those words came into his head and wouldn’t let go one day during Holy Week when he was looking at a crucifix.
He looked up “ambush predator” and found that it describes “a creature which lies motionless and still, camouflaged by its environment for one purpose – to attract prey and pounce on them.” He illustrated that image with pictures of snakes, spiders and ocean creatures whose eyes were the only things that made them stand out from their surroundings.
“Jesus on the cross is an ambush predator in the way He seems invisible, even helpless, while in reality being in charge of the situation until it’s time to free sinners from Satan’s power,” Father Riccardo said.
“I’m not implying that He’s not suffering, that He’s play-acting. He is up on the cross doing something, even though He appears totally passive. He’s showing God’s love and going to war for us,” he said.
“He’s been sweating blood, arrested, slapped, judged, stripped, scourged, crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross. He looks utterly helpless, but He’s engaging the enemy in battle. Like the Trojan horse, this is His disguise.
“He allows Himself to become man and succumb to death so He can get into hell, beat Satan and liberate it from inside. When it looks like He’s lost, He’s actually won. Jesus on the cross is the ultimate ambush predator.”
Father Riccardo said this way of looking at the victorious Jesus was common in the early Church but seemed to fade over the years and be replaced with emphasis on His suffering. “We need to return to this kind of preaching (on the triumph resulting from Jesus’ death) because this is how men in particular get won,” he said.
He quoted from the words of several Church fathers on the victorious Jesus, including one homily from a second-century bishop, Melito of Sardis, which Father Riccardo described as the story of “trash-talking Jesus.”
In it, Jesus says, “Who takes issue with Me? Let him stand before Me. I set free the condemned. I gave life to the dead. I raise up the entombed. I am He who destroys death and triumphs over the enemy and crushes Hades and binds the strong man and bears humanity off to the heavenly heights.”
“What difference does this make in our lives?” Father Riccardo asked. “It changes everything. By His death and glorious resurrection, Jesus has changed humanity, destroyed death, transferred us, given us access to the Father, recreated us, rendered sin impotent, given us authority over the enemy and sent us on a mission to get His world back.”
In talks earlier in the day, Father Riccardo described the Gospel as “not merely good news, but the most extraordinary news we can imagine,” and said its proclamation can be summed up through its answers to the questions “Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is everything so obviously messed up? What, if anything, has God done about it, and if God has done something, how should I respond?” He said an easy way to remember this is through the words “created, captured, rescued and response.”
His other topics included the difference between the Genesis creation story and all other stories of its type; the importance of a sense of wonder and awe in realizing God’s power and understanding why He made us; and the tactics of accusation, lying, division, flattery, temptation and discouragement used by Satan to destroy people.
In the discussion on Satan’s tactics, he talked about his own sexual abuse by family members for several years and how he never told his parents because he listened to Satan’s accusations against him.
After his parents’ death, he told his sisters. He said he was sharing the information with his audience because he knew many in attendance also have suffered abuse. He urged them to talk about it and to seek professional help.
At one point, he used the phrase “the grace of despair,” which sounds like a contradiction but describes the ability to realize how hopeless people would be if there were not a God who wanted to save them by sending Jesus on a rescue mission to bring them from captivity into hope.
Members of the Catholic Cross Bearers motorcycle ministry include (from left) Cecil Johnson of Moore, Oklahoma; Dave Schaffer of Columbus and Scotty Snodgrass of Moore, Oklahoma. CT photo by Ken Snow
The event, sponsored by St. Gabriel Radio, drew more than 2,500 people from Ohio, surrounding states and throughout the Midwest. Two of those who came the farthest were Cecil Johnson and Scotty Snodgrass of Moore, Oklahoma, members of the Catholic Cross Bearers motorcycle ministry. They joined ministry member Dave Schaffer of Columbus at the event.
The three men have been involved with Acts XXIX ministry started by Father Riccardo and were part of a three-video series related to Father Riccardo’s Rescued book which was done by Zoom when the COVID pandemic limited public gatherings.
“We have also been a test group during the past eight weeks, participating via Zoom during the ministry’s weekly Tuesday morning men’s group meeting,” Johnson said. “We’ve had lots of interaction back and forth with Father Riccardo’s team, and it’s been wonderful.
“So, we were very excited when we saw that the first Rescue Project Live! was going to be in Columbus, and we decided to come. Scotty and I rode our bikes 1,000 miles to be here.”
Granville St. Edward the Confessor members (from left) Ian Helgerman, Darius Helgerman, Stephanie Helgerman and Victoria Helgerman. CT photo by Ken Snow
Following Father Riccardo’s fourth talk, Columbus Bishop Earl Fernandes celebrated Mass, and there was a Eucharistic procession inside the Celeste Center to honor the Feast of Corpus Christi and to begin the diocesan celebration of the National Eucharistic Revival being sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Father Riccardo’s final talk was followed by a ceremony commissioning those present as heralds of the Gospel. Praise and worship music was provided throughout the day by musicians from the Damascus Catholic Mission Campus in Knox County.
In his concluding message, Father Riccardo urged those present to be “active agents of sabotage,” in the words of noted Christian author C.S. Lewis.
“Our weapons are love, truth, beauty, goodness and justice,” Father Riccardo said. “We wield them to continue God’s work and to spread His rescue mission in every sphere of influence in our lives. While creation will only be fully restored when the rightful king returns and puts everything right, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t work for you and me to do right now.
“We should strive to bring everything that we touch and encounter back into conformity with the Father’s original intent. God has already done His part, if you will, and now it’s our turn.”
