One of the streams flowing along Lincoln Drive and into the Wissahickon.

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010

Who would have thought that these trout waited all winter for these young fishers? They pulled them from the Wissahickon along Forbidden Drive, just a few miles from Center City!

HOLY THURSDAY MASS WITH THE MEDICAL MISSION SISTERS

“Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed.”

During Masses in Lent these words of the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer soften some of the harshness of this season, a season when spring is not yet, a season when, as penitents, we realize in our own bodies the suffering of the Lord. Each year we celebrate within a cyclical pattern the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. In Christ, despite on-the-ground evidence moving us to the contrary, we are a joyful people. With Christ each year we receive hope filled gifts of renewal.

I have the privilege of working with high school boys and also with a talented group of young adults who are their teachers, mentors and coaches. They are a congregation that tests my seniority; my work is sometimes the work of fraternal correction and always the work of challenge and encouragement. And in this work, generally, I protect the young from some of my darker worries. Despite our repeated experience of this joyful season and of Easter renewal, threatening clouds can hover over the hearts of many of us.

Tomorrow on Friday we may speak of an intimacy with Jesus as he joins us in our sufferings. This evening we celebrate with another leading image: Jesus offers himself to us as a young and confident trusted servant aiding us, even leading us when we get weary on our journey from slavery into freedom.

Earlier this Lent we read from the Book of Numbers, the fourth of the books of the Pentateuch. Numbers tells the history of the Israelites as they suffer through the long journey in the desert, repeatedly despondent, rebellious and sinful, repeatedly rescued by God’s mercy and help but never fully satisfied. This book is about the survival of a people on a long trek. As they journey there is a tension between the old and the young. Some of the older among them remember a less challenging past and want to abandon the journey. They want even to return to their slave quarters and the good food back in Egypt thinking the whips of the Pharaoh a small price to pay. The younger among them, however, have no memory of Egypt and have not yet grown weary; they can imagine only freedom and they long for a place where they can settle and bring new life to their offspring.

For so many years we have been trudging through the desert and we have not reached the promised land. We know now that it is not within our own power to get there. We worry that stresses of all kinds are leading our world to ruin. Sometimes because of our greed and ignorance there seems no future but the one that threatens to end in global catastrophe. Like the Israelites on their journey, though, we know in our hearts that there is no return to some alleged comfortable past.

The Christ, of course, always remains young no matter the age of the world and its isms. We listen for his voice among the young, men and women of every culture and country. We marvel at the commitment of so many to justice, and at their longing for reconciliation and a new world. God is persistent in giving them gifts of faith, hope and love. But we all must remind ourselves of our duty to walk together, young and old.

The youthful Christ comforts us today by washing our tired feet, feeds us with his own manna and strengthens us for a journey on which the experiences of young and old are blended together. There are those of us who can remember Sister Pollard, a seventy year old early ally of Dr. King. She knew the price of her dignity. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott she refused the offer of a ride and preferred to walk. Her commitment encouraged the young Dr. King when he heard her say: “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.” They both reached the Promised Land!

“Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed.”

These are senior players and managers of the 2009-2010 basketball season. They gathered for their end-of-the-year banquet and received various awards. None of them, I am told, will be playing on a college team. Fortunately they all have a great deal of personality and other talents. The captains, Sean Brophy and Joe Nardi, thanked especially their coach, Speedy Morris, for his great mentoring and leadership.

Speedy typically used only six or seven players in a game. But he honored the rest of the varsity by awarding them prizes honoring how they quickly learned what scouts taught them about opposing teams. With these new skills they helped the starters prepare for each game.

It was this group that played the semifinal Catholic League championship game against Neumann-Goretti in the Palestra. And I got a chance to say the prayer before the game in that sacred basketball arena:

"We gather, Lord God, first in thanksgiving for your generous spirit. May our game this night be worthy of the dedication in the long history of this arena to teamwork, to skills, to sportsmanship.

Bless our players. May they be free of injury and mean spirits. Bless our coaches, mentors, teachers and parents. Help them to appreciate the efforts of our players and to bring their enthusiasms into every good work.

May you, Lord, enjoy the game as much as we will.

St. Joseph, Pray for us.
Sts. Maria Goretti and John Neumann, Pray for us."

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. the Prep had a gathering there with some Prep alumni. Before the meeting Al Zimmerman and I walked in the park and saw how it was just waking up to spring. Our meeting was on the 12th floor but it turned out to be too windy and chilly to use the balcony.

Prep entrance after 27 inches of snow 2/6/2010; but the Girard Avenue trolleys were running during and after the storm. The city plows did a good job in our neighborhood but keeping a good parking spot is not easy!

Mary Greene January 28, 2010

RIP born 1920 and died 2010

All of our words at the funeral Mass ought to focus on the saving power of the Lord Jesus. In the time of loss we seek the comfort of our hope in the Lord Jesus. This hope tells us that life when we leave this earth is not taken away by the power of death but changed by the power of Christ’s victory. Mary with her generous prayerful spirit spoke this truth throughout her entire life. So we can feel confident that remembering her and remembering all of her charity toward us will open us up to this saving power of God. Today we share among ourselves her witness to the Spirit, her love for Jesus and Mary and her confidence in God’s saving power. So we do not hesitate to speak of her.

Mary Greene was among the first to welcome me to the Church of the Gesu parish when I arrived to do parish ministry in 1985. Her faith and charity were already legendary among us Jesuits, among those of us who ministered and lived at Gesu during the second half of the twentieth century including the Jesuit novices who came to live for short periods at Gesu. Mary and her sister Rebecca were the heart of a team that made sure that every Gesu School child had not only a good lunch but shoes on their feet. Mary and her sister Rebecca were the heart of the team that helped with every household task in the large Church of the Gesu and the parish center facilities. Indeed Mary’s daily chores, too, included the care of anyone who was sick, whether it be someone in her family or a parishioner or neighbor who needed care of any kind. Her own home from time to time became an assisted living center or even a nursing home. She never turned away anyone in need. And she often reminded me of whom I should visit with Communion or about anyone who needed our parish assistance.

Everyone who knew her learned lessons about God from her. I remember vividly the day that she came to me to tell me about the death of a former parishioner who had gone astray. Some might think that he ought not have a Catholic funeral in the Church of the Gesu, she told me. She agreed that he had indeed made a mistake but he had done so much for the young people of Gesu and the children in Gesu school. One day, she told me, he, knowing that her own shoes were in bad shape, was looking for her, saw her walking on the street and stopped his car and gave her a new pair of shoes that he had gotten for her. We need to forgive him, she said. When I listened to her, I knew that the Spirit was giving me a life lesson about God’s forgiveness and, of course, the funeral took place in the Church of the Gesu.

And would she not give us some guidance when we were going astray! One day, for example, we were discussing the rosary and I told her that I used the rosary beads frequently but, instead of Hail Marys, I recited a antiphon 10 times for each of the decades. She told me that the Blessed Mother would not like that. I still smile at this…. perhaps at my peril!

One day after she had moved from her home on 18th Street over to senior housing on Franklin Street, I would no longer see her often. The Gesu had closed; St. Malachy’s was a long walk for her from Franklin St. and she often went to St. Peter’s for Mass. She was always up and out for different St. Malachy events or other things but more often than before she would be by herself in her small apartment. I asked her once, “Mary, after all those years of living with other people and constantly out with other people, don’t you ever now feel lonely?” She looked at me with a gentle smile that indicated that I had asked a really stupid question and said, “I am never alone, Father; God is always with me.”

She always prayed for all of us and I know she did simple things for other people down to the last months, simple things like the habit she had of sending me a St. Patrick’s Day card because I had once told her about the only one St. Patrick’s Day card I would always get from my mother until my mother died.

Wasn’t she something? It makes us weep that God has been so kind to so many of us, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlettered, through this saintly woman. Our remembrance of her supports our faith. Our remembrance of her consoles us. Our remembrance of her fills us with a true hope that we will see her again in God’s good time. A more powerful remembrance of her, indeed the most powerful remembrance of Mary exists in God’s own heart and mind. So powerful is God’s remembrance that she continues to live with God in this new existence.

This procession of mourners is viewing the body of Rev. John J. Deeney, S.J., a Philadelphian and Prep grad ('45) who ministered in the state of Jharkhand, India for over 50 years. He was buried in mid January at a school and church in Chaibasa, part of the native area of the Ho tribal people. Fr. Deeney was the first to work on a Ho-English dictionary. Over 2000 people attended his funeral Mass celebrated with 120 priests.

The lad leaning over the casket may be anointing Father Deeney with oils as is the Ho custom at funerals.

I was able to be present at a Memorial Mass in Philadelphia that was celebrated on January 30 for about 100 family members and friends, most from the Philadelphia area.

We had no marigolds but we did have flowers and we did present a small bag of rice at the offertory procession as is the Ho custom.

See John's obit article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (with a photograph)

http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/83009977.html