"I give thanks to God always for all of you ..."

Three years ago I served as the assistant director of my community’s undergraduate seminary at the University of Notre Dame.  During a football weekend, one of our seminarians hosted his uncle who was at that time studying for the permanent diaconate.  Don Longano joined our seminarians for Mass before the game and he brought along his pastor who had authored several books for our community’s publishing house.  Later that morning at the seminarians’ tailgate party I had the chance to meet and speak with Monsignor Vaghi.

Final Vows at Little Flower

This past weekend Little Flower Parish and School had a tremendous cause for celebration.  Sister Rachel Terry, IHM who serves as the music teacher in our school professed her final vows in The Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  It was a very beautiful liturgy and as always it is very powerful to see someone consecrate their lives to Christ and His Church.  May God bless Sister Rachel and the witness she provides!

There was a tremendous turn-out of parishioners, school children, and IHM Sisters for the celebration. Frs. Jeff and Mark who have previously been assigned to Little Flower also made return visits to help us celebrate. Here we pose with Sister and some of her family and friends:

I was also very happy to reconnect with two of the three IHM sisters who served at St. Joseph by the Sea High School when I was a student there. Sisters Mindy and Joan taught religion and music respectively and I remember their humor and kindness very fondly. We had not seen one another since I graduated in 1995!

And I didn't leave the festivities empty handed. The chair I sat in at dinner just happened to have a "winning sticker" on the underside of the seat and so I got to take the table's centerpiece home.  Here Fr. Anthony awards me my prize ... which I promptly passed on to our parish secretary so that it would not be doomed to a rapid and inglorious death by my black thumb!

All Hallows' Eve

The following article will be published in this weekend's Little Flower Parish bulletin, as part of our weekly "Clergy Corner:"

Sometime this weekend, I will fire-up the old DVD player, pop some popcorn, and sit down to a private showing of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” – a perpetuation of my family’s annual tradition from when I was a boy.

Like the holiday itself, the show includes lots of kids dressed as ghosts and witches, pumpkins carved into scary Jack-O-Lanterns, Trick-or-Treating, and of course it adds Linus’ anticipation of the mythical Great Pumpkin and his rise from the “most sincere of all pumpkin patches.”

There are many people, especially Evangelical Christians, who are scandalized by such Halloween imagery. These people rightly fear the practice of the occult and they worry that Halloween encourages children to dabble in it. I’m convinced, however, that despite its occasional excesses we can all help redeem the celebration of Halloween.

The holiday’s very name, after all, is a shortened form of “All Hallows’ Eve” – in other words, the day before All Saints’ Day, which leads, the very next day, into All Souls’ Day. These two beautiful feasts celebrate the great witnesses of our faith – among them a great number of martyrs who suffered and died for their love of the Lord – and then move on to commemorate and pray for all the dead, saints and sinners alike.

So when kids dress up as super heroes or saints, let’s take the opportunity to speak about the virtues these role models encourage us to cultivate in our own lives. When we eat cakes decorated with skeletons and tombstones, and Jello-molds shaped like brains, let’s reflect on our own mortality and come to see death as our friend, as St. Francis taught us. When we decorate our homes with witches and devils let’s take the chance to remember that we do indeed believe in the presence and power of evil – but that we also never exaggerate our fear of it. We can even see our Halloween traditions as a way of taunting and mocking these symbols of evil because we recognize that ultimately Christ has power over them!

Even when we carve our Jack-O-Lanterns we can recall the myth that our Irish Catholic forebears brought with them to their colony here in Maryland. The story of Jack and his lantern is a morality tale that teaches us the evil of selfishness and the value of selfless service (see more about this traditional Catholic folk tale at American Catholic).

If we make some of these lessons a part of our Halloween fun, then we will indeed have prepared ourselves well for All Hallows’ Day, and for November, the month of the dead.

"Our Liberty Depends on the Freedom of the Press."

In the final weeks of the semester, as busy as I was with school work, I still had to accept a couple of kind invitations to join students from Little Flower School on their annual class trips.  Our pastor invited me to join the eighth grade class as he took them on their annual surprise graduation trip . . . this year to the Newseum, located just off the Mall, with fabulous views of the Capital:

The Newseum is a museum dedicated to the history of the free press, especially in the United States. It therefore documents the people and events of some of the biggest news stories of the last century, and the media that covered them.  It also gives tribute to journalists who have been imprisoned or killed in the midst of their work, and calls attention to places where there is no freedom of the press.

One exhibit includes a section of the Berlin Wall - which not only serves as an artifact from a major news story of the twentieth century, but also helps highlight the lack of freedom that existed behind the Iron Curtain.

Another exhibit reproduces the office of Tim Russert, one of my favorite newsmen:

Finally, another exhibit includes the destroyed television antenna from the top of the World Trade Center towers.  The wall behind the tower is covered with the front-pages of newspapers from around the world from the morning of September 12, 2001.

As you may be able to tell from the wall on the right, we were visiting the Newseum just days after the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. The front pages of newspapers from around the world announcing this news were being projected onto a blank wall, adding a fitting final chapter to the exhibit.

(The quote in the title of this post is from Thomas Jefferson)

Preaching the “Gospel of Life” Amidst the “Culture of Death”

The following will appear in our Little Flower Parish bulletin this Sunday, January 23rd:

This past Thursday, January 20th, my religious community celebrated the feast of our founder, Blessed Basil Moreau. This weekend, I’ll have the chance to celebrate with several of my brothers in Holy Cross who will travel to Washington, D.C., accompanying groups of students from our colleges and universities on the annual March for Life.

At first, it might seem that these two commemorations have very little in common. And yet, a further examination of Blessed Basil Moreau’s life, I believe, offers us a powerful example of zealous witness in troubled times.

Blessed Basil Moreau was born in France, in the wake of the French Revolution which had decimated the Church in France. Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C. describes the society in which Blessed Basil Moreau lived and worked:

“The dominant world culture is aggressively hostile to religion in general and Catholicism in particular . . . Moral lapses are magnified in the popular media, and many religious congregations seem uncertain of their role and their future . . . The great universities of the world are virtual bastions of atheism, while Catholic schools struggle to resist direct control by the state or even by their local bishop. Many prudent and reasonable people of faith are tempted to retreat into their own worlds; others have lost the will and self-confidence to carry on the Church’s great commission to win the world for Christ.”

But Blessed Basil Moreau strenuously resisted being entirely assimilated into such a culture, and never retreated from challenging whatever was un-Christian in the culture. The restoration of the Church was the principal mission of Blessed Basil’s life, and his reason for founding the Congregation of Holy Cross. Blessed Basil worked tirelessly to reunite “learning, holiness, and service into a single religious enterprise” for service to the Church and the conversion of society.

Of course, it’s not much of a stretch to see the parallels to our own day in this description of nineteenth century France. Certainly those of us who will gather on the Mall tomorrow are fully aware of the challenges our Church and society face, especially in combating what soon-to-be Blessed Pope John Paul II referred to as “the culture of death.”

And yet my experience of previous Marches convinces me that there are also many people today – especially young people – who are determined to follow in the path of Blessed Basil Moreau. They refuse to surrender to the dominant “culture of death,” refuse to retreat from evangelizing the culture in which we live. Like the apostles in the Gospels they have responded to our Lord: “To whom else would we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”

Let us pray that all of us – especially young people – will grow in learning, develop in personal holiness, and give ourselves tirelessly in service. This is how we will restore the Church in our own age and proclaim to the world the Gospel of Life.

I will once again be attending the Vigil for Life and the March for Life this year, but this time as a resident of the Washington D.C. area . . . this means I have the pleasure of spending time with Holy Cross seminarians and our college students but don't have to endure two twelve hour bus rides to do it!! More on the weekend's events next week. Let us pray for Life!

Christmas at Catholic

In the last few weeks of the semester, amid all of the research and writing, there was still time to enjoy some of the Christmas decorations that sprang up across the District and especially on the campus of Catholic University.

The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was nicely decorated . . . 

. . . as were the academic buildings on campus.

And back home, at Little Flower, the rectory was also nicely lit for the season.

I hope to be able to get some more pictures of the trees and nativity scenes at Little Flower and the Basilica Shrine, as they went up after my departure for New York in the fourth week of Advent.

My Humble Cell

Today marks two weeks since I moved into my new residence at Little Flower Parish. Actually, given the fantastically warm welcome I've received, it feels much longer than that - and it's already starting to feel like home. 

I had promised that I would post some pictures of my room.

When all of my things were boxed up and stacked in the center of the room, I was amazed there was so much stuff. But I knew it would fit, as it all fit in my even smaller room in Old College last year. As you can probably guess from the pictures, it was mainly books!

There are two things in the room that I have not had since I entered Holy Cross in 2000 . . . a TV and my own bathroom! I'm not sure I care about the TV all that much. I don't watch much TV other than sports and I prefer to watch them with other people. I could get used to not having to share a bathroom, however. My classmates marvel that I've shared a bathroom for so long, and they marvel at who I've had to share them with! They tell me this is a life-change you don't go back on!

Upstairs, where the other priests reside, there is a small chapel and guest room.  Also on the first floor is the kitchen,  dining room, and a nice community room, very reminiscent of the room I renovated in the rectory at Holy Redeemer.

Already the best part of the rectory has been the priestly fraternity I've experienced within.  I'm grateful to the men here and am looking forward to the months and years ahead.

My New Parish

I promised to provide another post on my new parish of residence, and I know that there is a particular group of readers interested in the architecture of the parish church. So without further ado, I am happy to present a brief tour of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland.

You may remember from previous posts that the exterior of the church looks like this:

Just inside the main doors, and to the left, is found the sunken Baptistry:

The nave is in a slight fan-shape. The sanctuary is behind a truncated altar rail, with a reredos of stone and glass. Above, the crucifix is surrounded with mosaic in the pattern of rays of light. Altars to the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph are found on either side.

The church was constructed in 1967, just after the Second Vatican Council, so I imagine there was never a true high altar - but the altar of Reservation is clearly the focal point of the church. 

There are six very large stained-glass windows, in a slightly modern and yet perfectly readable style. Two are devoted to the Blessed Mother, in her Immaculate Conception and her Glorious Assumption. Two others depict our Lord's Ascension and His Nativity: 

The final two windows, above the choir loft, depict the parish' patroness, Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.  The windows show the story of her life in small scenes. Here she is shown sweeping in the cloister, because through her "little way" she was devoted to doing even small daily tasks with great love.

And here she is depicted on her deathbed, experiencing a vision of the Blessed Mother.

It's a very nice church, that reminds me a great deal of the best parts of the Moreau Seminary chapel, which was constructed just a decade before and uses many of the same materials.

My room has come along nicely and I'll put together a brief post with some photos of that very soon.

A New Home: Little Flower Parish

I mentioned earlier this spring that I had been looking for a parish to reside in during my graduate studies in Washington D.C.  During my visit to campus in April I visited several parishes and spoke to several priest friends about parishes with a history of housing student-priests.

Since that time I've been pleased to accept an invitation from Monsignor Peter Vaghi to reside at Little Flower Parish in Bethesda, Maryland.  I met Monsignor Vaghi last fall when he attended a football weekend at Notre Dame. He was hosted by Ave Maria Press, the Congregation's publishing house, for which he has written two books and is contracted to write two more. 

He was also accompanied by Mr. Don Longano, a parishioner of Little Flower Parish, an ND alum, uncle to Old Collegian John Whittaker, and as of Saturday, a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. With wonderful "family" connections like this, I figured I couldn't go wrong at Little Flower Parish.

I was also thrilled to know that I would be the fifth priest living in the rectory and that there is a convent full of I.H.M sisters who work in Little Flower School! It will be a great to have priests and religious to share community and ministry with while I am in studies.

This past week I packed a rental car with all my things and drove from Notre Dame to Bethesda. With help from John Whittaker, who was visiting Bethesda for his uncle's ordination to the diaconate, I settled all my boxes into my new room on Wednesday. John and I also spent an afternoon touring CUA's campus and visiting with his family.

I simply could not have been more warmly welcomed by Monsignor Vaghi and the other priests of Little Flower Parish and I am very grateful to them. Though I left for New York after only forty-eight hours, my arrival in Bethesda has made me all the more excited for my final move in August.