The "north rose window" at St. John the Evangelist in Morrisville.

A dynamic and explosive universe!

The north rose window at the Cathedral in Chartres.

An ordered, contained universe!

Feast of the Immaculate Conception December 2010

Five hundred years ago when Ignatius of Loyola was a teenager (if they had teenagers then!), the Blessed Mother held a position of great honor in the popular European imagination. In tribute and devotion to her, cities all over Europe had constructed and were still at work on the great cathedrals. These public works projects in every major city created community energy and developed the talents and skills of all kinds of people from stone masons to architects to glass makers to those who worked in tapestry.

The great spaces of the cathedrals embodied the very place where the virgin gave birth to Jesus and provided the security, the peace and the promise that sustained and comforted the faithful.

This effort at creating these beautiful tributes was in reaction to the anxieties that beset these communities often visited by devastating plagues, by wars that resulted in pillage and mayhem and by the usual uncertainties about crops and livestock. Our Lady was accessible both in the community effort to create the Cathedral and in her presence as symbolized by its central place in the community. Our Lady provided her personal guarantee of stability and confidence.

Here in Philadelphia we are no longer subject to plagues that we do not understand, though for a short time HIV wore that mantel. We do not have wars, though we do have a living memory of civil unrest. We are not worried about what we will eat today or in the years ahead. We have lingering anxieties, of course, about the safety of family and friends just as people did five hundred years ago.

But we do have a new anxiety, unimagined by Ignatius and his peers. They imagined the universe, then, as contained and ordered. Today our science tells us that the universe is dynamic and explosive. The number of stars is unimaginable and the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in this universe that we struggle to measure is almost certain. Our anxiety today is about our place on this tiny, fragile speck of earth sustained by a sun that will one day die.

In this contemporary context we need Our Lady just as much if not more than the Europeans of five hundred years ago. She comforts us in the vastness of creation by her witness. Willingly she bears the first born of all creation, Jesus. God in the Lord Jesus, with some power inaccessible to us, rules with divine love over all that we know and do not know in our physical world. But Our Lady remains as accessible to us as our own mothers and gives us confidence by her presence. Just as she did among the disciples in the anxious time after the calamity of the crucifixion, she now offers a posture of comfort. She can see us through our calamities as well.

In approaching Mary it helps us to be humble like the young Mexican couples in Mexico City who bring their newborns, sometimes so young that their skin is still wrinkled and red, to the Virgin of Guadalupe, to present them to her for her blessing and protection. In any joy or sorrow, but especially to ward off useless anxieties, we go to Our Lady and let her love of her son help us to be in love with his changing world with all its uncertainties.

After forty years and literally hundreds of soccor victories as head coach of Prep soccer, Jim Murray '59 (my classmate) this year coached a team to the Catholic League Soccer Championship for the first time. Senior Pat Kardish scored the two goals in a 2-1 victory over Archbishop Wood. Pat told the press that he and his classmates made a promise as freshmen three years ago to one day win the title for Coach Murray.

Just yesterday a slight-built boy is walking along the corridor nearly dragging his school bag with one arm. His other arm is in a cotton sling. I assume his collar bone is damaged.

"How did you do that?" I inquired.

Rugby

Will you go back to playing rugby as soon as you heal?

My mother has other ideas!

Well, you need to stay on good terms with your mother.

Mmm.

I am sure that you have many other talents.

I like to think so!

Every now and then one takes a picture that needs no caption and can stand entirely on its own!

The smiling guy in the middle is Tom Burgoyne, the Phillie Phanatic, out of costume. His mother is with him. He spoke at the Mother-Son Communion Breakfast. He had a dozen pratfall stories to tell including the one about his first interview.

When the Phillies decided that they wanted a mascot they placed an ad for a mascot in the Inquirer. Whether or not Tom realized that the employer was the Phillies, he sent his resume to the post office box listed. On his resume, of course, was the fact that he had been the Hawk at the Prep.

So the Phillies called him to an interview. Tom talked about his growing confidence during the interview when he was asked to dance and to make funny noises. "Usually," he said, "at interviews the employer is trying to eliminate the idiots. But in this case an idiot was what they wanted and I knew I had a chance."

Gabriel (Gabe) Infante, Prep football coach, awards the victory pigskin to quarterback Skyler Mornhinweg after the Prep team beats public school powerhouse George Washington in its season opener, 36-25.

I am sorry to be absent from the blog for the balance of the summer. The pictures are of Bar Harbor taken from Cadillac Mountain and of some of our class of 2014 being welcomed by the class of 2011. It was a great summer for me, out of the city for a number of reasons:

• June trip to Jesuit Secondary Education Association Colloquium at Santa Clara University. I was with a dozen faculty and staff members from SJP and we joined over 400 participants from over 40 Jesuit high schools in North America



• July trip to Maine with three sisters and brother in law. We spent time on a beach, fished for mackerel that obliged us as usual by jumping on to our hooks, made a collection of beach glass, visited Acadia National Park, watched movies, steamed lobsters and hosted our Maine friends, Peter and Kathy Watko and their sons, Brian and Pete.



• August trip to Germantown Philadelphia with seven of our seniors on a service trip to the Vincentian ministries in that part of the city. Terrific young men that confirm the mission of the Prep.



• August trips to Avalon and Margate for Masses with Prep grads and friends.



• August trip to Wernersville for retreat



• August trip to see the Phils lose to Houston during their nervous August slump



• Back to school now with 987 boys, 275 freshmen of whom 63 are from Philly and Camden.

Some summer photos now available on picasaweb!

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Helencohalan&target=ALBUM&id=5513486146932999953&authkey=Gv1sRqCPeegbUlrebcQ&feat=email