Jesuit On Curing The Deep Wound

....it’s not enough to be spiritual-but-not-religious. Not enough to be a nice guy. We need a cure that goes as deep as the wound. We need, as St. Paul says, through the obedience of one man, to be made righteous. We need Christ. Not surprisingly, Christ turns out to be the ultimate basis for Christian conversion, for Christian fasting, Christian almsgiving, and Christian prayer. We do these practices because Christ himself went before us doing these things; He filled these practices with His own power. We read today that in the desert, Christ himself fasted, underwent trial, and overthrew Satan. It is because He did so that our own fasting can now claim a share in His victory.

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Link (here) to read Jesuit Transitional Deacon Arron Pidel's full homily.

Heavenly Nourishment

The Imposition of Salt

 

Quality of salt is that it causes hunger and thirst. The Church used to draw attention to this feature of salt in the rite of baptism used before Vatican II. There, the priest would pinch salt in the mouth of the baby to be baptized. He would then pray, After this first taste of salt, let his [or her] hunger for heavenly nourishment not be prolonged but soon be satisfied … 

This “heavenly nourishment” was an allusion, of course, to the Eucharist, to the true food and true drink that Christ wants to give us all. This should give us pause. Am I salt of the earth in this sense too? 

Does my life and witness make others hunger and thirst for the Eucharist? Jesus’ words today suggest that our lives will have this effect to the extent that they retain the distinctive flavor of the Gospel, to the degree that they are staked on the power of realities unseen. The more this is true of us, the more Catholics will desire to “come home.”

Link (here) to the full post and homily by Deacon Aaron Pidel, S.J.

A Little Bit Of Social Courage

Now being Pro-Life here in the US rarely requires us to endure mob violence or imprisonment.  But it does require a little bit of social courage—a willingness to looked down on, to be excluded from certain circles.  But isn’t it worth it?  

To suffer a snub for the sake of justice, for the sake of witnessing to that inconvenient truth: that last year, in the US alone, there were 1.25 million violent—and legally-sanctioned—attacks on human life in the form of abortion?  

This does number does not even take into account the tremendous emotional and spiritual injury done to the mothers and fathers of these children, many of whom were deceived into thinking they had no other choice.  Few are sufficiently awake to this fact.  For that reason, awakening others will require courage: people tend to be grumpy when they’re first woken from sleep.

Link (here) to the full post of Deacon Arron Pidel, S.J. at the blog by Jesuits at Whomsoever Desires

The Harvesting Of Love

................the doctrine of the communion of saints is both challenging and consoling. It’s challenging because it implies that there is no such thing as private sin. When I fail to live up to the name—the personal mission—that God has given me, the whole Church is diminished. 

It’s consoling too, however, because nothing done in love need ever done in vain. Our hidden sacrifices, our sincere prayers, or hardships patiently borne, all these things can build up the Church. 

From prisons, from sick beds, from kitchens and from offices, God harvests the love and fidelity that he will use to touch hearts, heal wounds, and raise up new saints.

Link (here) to read full homily by  Deacon Arron Pidel, S.J.

Way To Go Gentlemen! Jesuits Enter The Diaconate

Archbishop Wilton Gregory

Seven Jesuits who are students at the School of Theology and Ministry now have added the title of deacon to their credit. The seven — John Brown, SJ, Jeff Johnson, SJ, Joe Laramie, SJ, Joel Medina, SJ, Antoine Paumard, SJ, Aaron D. Pidel, SJ, and Alejandro Olayo Méndez, SJ — received the sacrament of Holy Orders on Oct. 8 at St. Ignatius Church, where they were ordained as deacons, enabling them to preach sermons, perform baptisms and witness marriages. Archbishop of Atlanta Wilton D. Gregory presided at the Mass and administered the ordination, with family and friends of the seven looking on as well as members of the STM and University communities. [See a slideshow of the event at http://bit.ly/9c3nxD] “The ordination was beautiful,” said Laramie, who was joined at the celebration by his parents, grandparents, godparents, sister and her future brother-in-law. “The music, having my family attend, along with brother Jesuits and fellow STM students — I was really able to pray during the Mass. I felt so grateful that God has called me to this life. As a deacon, I’m honored to serve the Church.” “It was a beautiful, terrific ceremony,” echoed Johnson, whose parents traveled from Tennessee to be at the ordination. A reception, sponsored by STM, followed on the Brighton Campus. The formal process of ordination involves the bishop invoking the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands on the deacon candidates. The deacon candidates then receive their vestments from a priest they have chosen to perform the vesting ritual. Johnson said he chose Rev. Brad Schaeffer, SJ, rector of Blessed Peter Faber Community, to do his vesting to thank him for all the support he has shown him. Deacon Pidel, a native of Georgia, chose his spiritual director Rev. Casey Beaumier, SJ, a graduate student, to do his vesting. “The ordination was magnificent,” said Fr. Beaumier. “It is a great sign of hope. It was a gift to me to be able to participate and their ordination is a gift to our church.”

Link (here) to the rest of the article.

Jesuit Deacon On The Depths Of Divine Love

Christ loved us while we were still sinners, the admission of sin is no longer crushing.  It is healing.  For if we believe that Christ’s love is stronger than our sins, then to explore the depth of our sinfulness is to explore the even greater depth of divine love.  And, to explore the depths of divine love is to better appreciate the darkness of sin—since our sins have been committed against so loving a Father.  And so the experience of sin and the experience of divine love grow together.  They are directly proportional, as the tax collector saw; not inversely proportion, as the Pharisee feared.

Link (here) to the full homily of Arron Pidel, S.J.

I Will Serve Under The Banner Of Jesus Christ

This is the Christian battle cry, it is the simple decision one must choose at every crossroad of ones life. Jesuit Deacon Kevin Dyer, S.J. (has posted on St. Ignatius' spiritual exercise, The Two Standards. Here is an excerpt from Deacon Kevin's post. 

St. Ignatius—the former soldier—was particularly sensitive to the constant battle being waged within the world between the God who created us with dignity and the forces of evil which look to pervert that dignity to selfish ends.  Human beings either praise, reverence, and serve God—thus becoming who they were created to be—or they follow a lie and begin to break themselves down in the core of their being.  In this meditation we imagine these opposed paths of life as two armies encamped against each other, led by Christ on one hand, and Satan, the prince of lies, on the other.  The grace we are seeking is first, a knowledge of Satan’s ways so that we can guard against them, and second, a knowledge of Christ’s so that we can more easily follow His path.

Link (here) to read the full post at The Spiritual Exercises Blog.
Painting of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Meister von Meßkirch

The Face Of A Jesuit

Korean Jesuits Shin-jae Youh, Jin-hyon Lee, and Jin-hyuk Park, were joined by East Timorese Jesuit Plínio Gusmão Martins at the ordination, with Bishop Greg O'Kelly, S.J. presiding. In his homily, Bishop O'Kelly spoke of the journeys of the four young men into their vocation.

Bishop O'Kelly said he was intrigued to learn that both Shin-jae and Plínio, in their younger days, had been told by different people that they had the ‘face of a Jesuit'.

‘This is intriguing me', he said.

‘I have fears about what some people might think a Jesuit face might look like.

That's clearly an avenue that might be explored by the Jesuit vocations committee. Ordination to the diaconate is a special sacrament within the Catholic Church, said Bishop O'Kelly. ‘Holy orders has three levels of practice as is reflected in the apostolic church where we find deacons, priests and bishops. Something does happen to the inner person with these sacraments.

The sacrament imposes an inner configuration - to use a term favoured by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict - an orientation of the person that can never be revoked.'

As deacons, the four young men have the tasks of proclaiming the Gospel, preparing the Eucharist, giving communion, bringing God's word, presiding over public prayer, as well as saying baptisms, marriages, providing last rites, and leading the rites of burial.

Link (here) to the full article in the Province Express

Jesuit Blogger Mark Mossa, SJ : Kills His Blog, ... AND I LET MYSELF BE DUPED

Farewell

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

I began blogging after finding myself victim to a certain amount of slander (see “When Jesuits Attack”) for writing a not wholly complimentary review of a book by George Weigel. In my subsequent dialogue with the author of the post—who publicly apologized for making uncharitable presumptions about me merely based on that review—

I thought I saw an opportunity, an opportunity to bridge a gap between people of different perspectives in the Church. So, I threw my hat into the fray and it was fun, for a while.

It even appeared that I might make some progress in this endeavor and perhaps even accomplish some goals that I had set for myself in becoming aware of the various dimensions of the Catholic blogosphere—

trying to encourage some positive discourse, and hoping to offer a counterweight to the negative and unfair caricature of the Society of Jesus which obtains in many a corner of that blogosphere.

And, at first, there seemed to be some hope of success at this, and there are still a coterie of bloggers (you know who you are) that give me hope in this regard. Yet, I’ve grown tired of swimming against the tide. The most negative of Catholic blogs still continue to be the most popular and, like myself, the more positive bloggers seem to be posting with far less frequency.

The recent General Congregation has only provide more fodder for negative speculation among those who hate the Society of Jesus, and indeed some who claim to love it. And, finally coming full circle, in a sense, I recently again found myself the victim of slander, falsely accused of being uncharitably slanderous myself, and not by a stranger like in the first case, but this time by a friend, by someone who should have known better.

That almost no one, it seems, found this hard to believe, just demonstrates what we have come to expect in the Catholic blogosphere. Charity, it seems, is not among those things. It has become—and perhaps always has been—a poisonous atmosphere which I no longer desire to be a part of. Nonetheless I have made some good friends as a result of my time here, and for this I am most grateful. Some of those friends were able to be with me at my diaconate ordination, and some will also be guests at my ordination to the priesthood in June.

It is this result of my time blogging which I can most celebrate. I may not have succeeded in convincing anybody of anything, the Catholic blogosphere may be nastier than ever, but I can celebrate a community of good friends with whom I have had the privilege of journeying in these years, and whose friendship I hope to maintain.

But it will be in other ways. Recent months have been difficult for me, and the episode I describe above was just the tip of the iceberg. But the blessing and grace has been that it has forced me to examine what is most important in my life right now. In a little over two months I will be ordained a priest, and there are few things more important than that right now. It is a fulfillment of God’s will toward which I have been working for nearly 11 years. It promises new challenges and new opportunities. What a privilege it will be to invite both strangers and friends to worship, and to be able to offer them reconciliation with God!

To focus on these most important things, some other things, I realize, must go by the wayside. At this point, continuing this blog is more a temptation than a real contribution. And I hope it has been a contribution, at least to some.

In my prayer these months as I prepare for ordination, I will also pray for you, my friends, who have in various ways been Christ to me these three and a half years. Please also pray for me. As I “silence” this blog, I do so in the hope of enjoying the silence which Alfred Delp invokes when describing ordination:

In that great moment of our life when we go to be ordained, we kneel before the bishop and he silently lays his hands upon us.

He is silent. You feel the blessed and creative burden of this hand through your entire being. And the congregation is silent. And this silence will surround the priest.

This keeping silent, the still hands of the silent bishop, calls forth the priest from his former homeland. It calls him forth from his previous refuges, and sequesters him and encompasses him with this silence, this stillness in which he will be consecrated, so that it will accompany him all his life. This silence must surround us. We guard people's secrets in silence. We call our heart to be silent, so that it does not love where it should not love. Our will for power must be silent, because we are sent forth to be the hands of the Lord in blessing. Silent, too, must be our will for all the other things that, otherwise, could shelter and anchor and secure a life in this world. The silence accompanies us, because it is always the sign that the Lord God has come especially near. This silence does not and must not belong only to the priest.

It is shared with all. May you also know the nearness of God in such silence. Thanks.

Link to ... I Let Myself Be Duped, Mark's post entitled Farewell

New Jesuit Deacons For Zimbabwe and English Provinces

London: Deacons ordained at Farm Street

11 April 2008
Bishop Alan Hopes, Auxiliary in the Westminster Archdiocese, ordained Sumeth Perera and Dominic Tomuseni to the diaconate on 5 April. The ceremony at Farm Street Church in London followed the ordination to the diaconate of Stephen Patterson in Spain last month. Dominic and Sumeth are both in their third year of studies for their Bachelor of Divinity at Heythrop College in London. 34-year-old Sumeth comes from Sri Lanka; he entered the Society of Jesus in 1993.

Dominic (36) is a member of the Zimbabwe Province, having entered the Society in 1997. He worked in vocations promotion and youth work in Guyana, and also as a teacher at the Marian Academy in the capital, Georgetown, before starting his studies in London in 2005.

Stephen Patterson entered the Society of Jesus in 1997 at the age of 31. Originally from Oldham in Lancashire, he trained as an electrician before taking up studies at Campion House, Osterley.

He was ordained deacon on 15 March at St Francis Xavier's Church at the Centro de Foramacion Padre Piquer run by the Jesuits in Madrid.

In his homily at the Farm Street event, Bishop Hopes reflected on the triple ministries of the deacon: as a minister of the Word, of the altar, and of loving service to others. He told Dominic and Sumeth that they should 'seek out ways in which [they] may find and serve Jesus Christ in others and their needs'.
© Independent Catholic News 2008

Photo is from the inside of Farm Street Church. Help with who the saint is?

Link (here)

First Catholic, Then Jesuit, Now Transitional Deacon, Soon To Be Jesuit Priest

Deacon ordained at UMass
December 02, 2007
By ALEX PESHKOV
AMHERST - About a hundred people gathered yesterday in the Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Chapel at the Newman Center at the University of Massachusetts, where the Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, ordained Sean Todd O'Mannion of Northampton as a transitional deacon. The term "transitional" signifies O'Mannion's preparation for the priesthood. "It's a wonderful day for all of us, and this is a very special place," McDonnell said. "Out of this place, out of this chapel, a tremendous number of vocations came over the years." The order of deacon dates back to the earliest days of the Catholic church. Deacons are ordained to serve in three areas: proclaiming the Gospel; assisting at the altar; and by works of charity. "Now you are not only a carrier of Gospel, but also its minister," McDonnell said. "It's a beautiful day. I am so thankful that everyone came and I am glad that (the ordination) happened here, at the Newman Center," said O'Mannion, 44, who earned his undergraduate and master's degrees in French at UMass. "We've got a lot of vocations out of here and also I came here ... So, in a way, it's all going full circle." It was at UMass some 10 years ago that O'Mannion converted to Catholicism, receiving the sacraments of initiation at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Northampton. He worked as an associate editor at Merriam-Webster before entering the Novitiate of Society of Jesus in 2001. During his time with the Jesuits he ministered to addicts in prison and worked on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. In 2004 he was accepted as a seminarian in the Springfield diocese and attended Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston. He has served pastoral assignments at St. Joseph, Pittsfield, St. Anne, Chicopee, and currently at St. John the Baptist, in Ludlow. Two other diocesan seminarians were ordained as transitional deacons at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican last month. Jonathon Reardon of North Adams and Mark Glover of Hampden, both students at the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City, were ordained by Cardinal John P. Foley. The Springfield diocese anticipates that they, along with O'Mannion, will be ordained to the priesthood on June 28 at St. Michael's Cathedral in Springfield.
©2007 The Republican © 2007 MassLive.com Link (here)