“PRAYER” (My warning from Mary Greene!)

Luke 11:1-13 (Sunday, July 29)

The diagnosis once known as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is now called AD/HD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Predominantly Inattentive Type. I give thanks that God has spared me this tongue-twister disorder. It often has very serious consequences for those who suffer with it. But at the same time when I pray I sometimes feel as though I fit into the “predominantly inattentive type.”

How difficult to learn to pray. Even so, what Jesus says is simple and clear: just say this “Our Father, who art in heaven….

You may have heard about the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. As Saint Ignatius Loyola did in the past, the Jesuits offer these prayerful exercises in a variety of formats: the thirty day retreat; an eight-day format; at the University level we offer a retreat in everyday life to fit the academic calendar of 24 weeks. My favorite retreat is the 12-minute one that we Jesuits are to make twice a day called the Examen of Consciousness. It is a flexible format of five or six prayerful attitudes that enrich the routine of everyday life.

Those like me who are “predominantly inattentive types” can do this prayer moving the fingers on the rosary beads to help focus attention. During the first decade I repeat a prayer of request for the spirit…And I have similar short prayers to say for each of the five decades. I told Mary Greene, one of my pious older friends about this way of saying the rosary, about reciting prayers different from the Hail Mary on the beads. She scolded me: “The Blessed Mother wouldn’t like that.”

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Nirmal Hriday (hospice of the dying)

Mother Teresa founded her first hospice for the destitute and dying in a neighborhood of Calcutta, Kalighat. Here pictured is the women's ward. Many young volunteers were serving there on this November day in 2003. They sat with those who were close to death and comforted them.

ANOTHER MEMORY OF INDIA (thanks to Elizabeth Eck, one of my companions, who gave me this picture)

November, 2003: We scarcely arrived for our one visit at Kalighat in Calcutta, Mother Teresa's first hospice for the poor and dying, when a cab drove up to the door carrying two sisters, Missionaries of Charity, and a sickly man whom they had picked up from the streets. Two burly young volunteers from South Korea without hesitating hurried to the cab and carried this dirty and redolent man into the hospice. They placed him on a stretcher and took him to the shower area so that they could bathe him. Painted on the wall over the bathing area, was a reminder placed there at the request of Mother Teresa herself: “The Body of Christ.”

These young volunteers, surely, acted as they did because they shared her faith.

Photo taken during my retreat at Wernersville, PA July, 2007

(Is this the sort of sky that Michelangelo saw?)

Father Frank Bourbon and the Theological Virtues
Luke: 10 The Good Samaritan (University Chapel July 15, 07)

“You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength and will, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

When some in the Protestant tradition comment on the story of the Good Samaritan, they point out that good works done in a neighborly way do not merit salvation; rather we are saved by faith alone.

Catholic catechism has it this way: “The Theological virtues of faith, hope and love are those virtues that relate directly to God. These are not acquired through human effort but, beginning with Baptism, they are infused within us as gifts from God.….[They] influence human virtues by increasing their stability and strength for our lives.”

When the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius, proclaimed that love is shown in deeds, he might also have said that faith, hope and love are shown in deeds. Faith, hope and love, as we read in the catechism, give stability and strength to all the human virtues, to all our practices of compassion, responsibility, friendship, courage and so forth. Not just love, but faith and hope as well, support acts of love of neighbor.

Recently a story told by a eulogist revealed to me the meaning of the relations among faith, hope and love. At the funeral of Jesuit Father Frank Bourbon who died in June his brother recalled going to one of Father Bourbon’s Masses and listening to him preaching. The delivery and content of his preaching was so winning that Father Bourbon got a round of applause from the congregation as he sat down at the end of his homily.

After this Mass the two men discussed this business of the applause and Father Bourbon described to his brother the meaning of applause during a homily: applause at the beginning of the homily is faith; applause in the middle of the homily is hope and applause at the end of the homily is charity. In these three moments of applause, Frank illustrated the unity of his own life lived in faith, hope and charity.

Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John - Image

Feast of the Birthday of John the Baptist

We celebrate the importance of the Baptist with two feasts during the year. Today we celebrate his birthday. In August we remember his death when we celebrate the Beheading of John the Baptist. We also preach about the Baptist in Advent when we prepare for Christmas. Then it is the Baptist who cries out “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” Then it is the same Baptist who is remembered by the writer Flannery O’Connor in the phrase she puts into the mouth of a young southern preacher and healer in her story The River. He chastises those among the congregation who come only for healing: “If you ain’t come for Jesus, you ain’t come for me.”

We are familiar with the artists of the renaissance whose paintings of the Madonna and Christ Child help us see the Incarnation of God in the little child. But a third favorite character in their paintings is John the Baptist. They paint him at different points in his life and death.
But today is a birthday party and we recall fittingly the many paintings of him as the little boy who is the playful companion of Jesus.

Always the two boys are looking and gesturing towards one another somehow conscious at their young age of their common destiny: itinerant preachers both announcing and bringing about a new world order; but both brutally executed by powers beyond their control.

Scholars tell us that paintings and marble busts of these two boys, so prominent in fifteenth century Italy, were actually a concrete representation for families of the hope that they had for their own children to grow in virtue. A treatise of the time on raising children encourages parents to decorate their homes with paintings of the men and women saints as children so as to inspire their own girls and boys. There were even childlike dolls in those days depicting the saints as children…something foreign in our own culture of Barbie and Ken.

Viewing the paintings of John and Jesus in their childhood puts me in a good mood. I dispel from my heart some of the playpen conflicts of my youth. I am thinking of the time that my friend Michael and I had a brawl in the playpen and I lost. But with scenes in our hearts and minds of Jesus and John the Baptist, we understand this feast as a feast of peace and of hope in the household, as a family birthday party. It is a feast, too, for those of us adults who take care of children in any way and who can help fulfill the hopes and dreams of children.

Happy Birthday, John.

THESE EIGHT GESU SCHOOL SEVENTH GRADERS HAVE AN INSIDE TRACK TO SCHOLARSHIPS AT

SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 2017

Saint Joseph's University is receiving remarkable help in its efforts to recruit students from Gesu School, a Jesuit and IHM sponsored elementary school in North Philadelphia. H.F. "Gerry" and Marguerite Lenfest contributed $2 million to the University scholarship endowment specifically for scholarships for Gesu School graduates. Father Timothy Lannon, SJ, University President, made the proceeds of the scholarship endowment in memory of his parents, James and Eileen Lannon, also available as an incentive for students like those pictured here. These seventh graders are the first members of the Lenfest Scholars Program. They will graduate from Gesu School in 2009 and go on to attend area high schools of their choice. Each year from seventh grade through high school these students can accumulate tuition credits toward their college education at Saint Joseph's. Each year they must continue to succeed academically, engage in school or community service and grow in their leadership skills. For these students the future just started to look brighter.

Pentecost Table at the Medical Missions in Fox Chase, PA May 28, 2007


Saint Luke's Catholic Church in McLean, Va decorated for Pentecost. Balloons are part of Easter decorations in some congregations on Bright Sunday, the Sunday after Easter.

Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2007

At Easter I am accustomed to quoting John Chrysostom’s Easter homily when he speaks of the angels being “wild with delight” at Jesus’ Resurrection. I believe that there is also in that sermon the thought that “God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead.” The early theologians used this phrase “risus paschalis,” Easter laugh or Easter joke to name that practical joke.

Some churches celebrate this idea with what they call “Bright Sunday” on the Sunday after Easter. The congregation decorates the Church with balloons; they arrive dressed in funny costumes; and the pastor invites stand-up comedy to the sanctuary. So if anyone of you has a joke to tell, this is the last day in the Easter season. Tell it now or hold your peace until next Easter!

(As a matter of fact, a woman did get up to tell this joke: "A man and wife from the United States were vacationing in Jerusalem when the woman suddenly died. The undertaker told the man that he could bury his wife right near Jerusalem for $500 or have the body flown home for $5,000. Without thinking the man said that he would prefer to fly the body home. The undertaker was a little perplexed at the choice since it was so expensive and he asked the man why he made the choice. And the man said, 'I heard that Jerusalem is the place where a man died and in three days rose from the dead. I don't want to take any chances!'" Not the best joke for the several married couples present but she got a good laugh anyway..... I am saving my joke for next year!)