'Tis the Season...

Seminarian Dan Zinger is seen here with the Spanish-language youth group he is working with at Mission Church.  They have adopted the name “Cristo Joven."  'Tis the season!

Board of Trustees Meet

Here are a couple photos of our December meeting of the SJS Board of Trustees' meeting yesterday.  The Board considered a wide range of items and heard a major report from the Educational Affairs Committee.

Craig Gibson, founding chairman of our Development Committee, completed his term yesterday and was presented by Cardinal O'Malley with a reproduction of the Chapel painting of Bishop Williams presenting the Seminary to Saint John.

Lost and Found and Christmas

Here's my homily from this morning.

It scared me…looking at that little kid. He was no more than three years old, screaming and crying at the top of his lungs in the middle of the aisle at Walmart a couple weeks ago. I had gone in to buy a year’s worth of soap and shampoo (as old men do this time of year) and as I turned into aisle three I spotted him, all alone, a quivering mass of tremulous panic and primal scream. He was lost. Lost and alone.

Lost like the old lady whose family abandoned her, so she ended up in a ramshackle nursing home in the North End of Springfield. And while that aid from Ghana is nice to her, most of the time she just sits in her urine-soaked wheelchair and cries softly, struggling through a cloud of dementia to remember a time when someone loved her enough to smile at her. She’ll be alone this Christmas. She’s lost.

And then there’s the kid at B.C. who just a few months ago thrilled at the idea of being in College, at the freedom to hook up or drop into a rager and then tweet selfies to all his friends. He’s even tried other stuff and while it all felt great at the time, no one really texts him back anymore and he’s not sure they ever will…ever. He’s alone today. He’s lost.

Lost as the the guy who the day after he told his wife about that thing he did, watched her walk out the door with the kids in tow, or the fellow who got laid off last week before he could even buy Christmas gifts for the kids, or the old man sitting in his car and just staring at the steering wheel after hearing it was stage four cancer, or the old woman who has just buried her husband of fifty years, who can’t stop sobbing as she walks from the grave. Lost. All lost. Living in a desperate diaspora of hopelessness and convinced it will never end.

And then along comes Jeremiah, the Prophet, peering down the alley-ways and tunnels of our souls and shouting to us: Behold, the days are coming, when God will lead you out of dark despair from hopelessness to his inestimable light. Out of mourning and weeping and shame to his endless, boundless love.

For the Virgin will bear a Son, and they shall name him “God is with us,” and he will lead us home, and we will never ever be lost again.

Pre-Theology Gathering as Classes End...

The last day of classes concluded with a gathering of the seminarians of Second Pre-Theology at Cheverus House for a festive dinner.  These good men, and all our seminarians begin Final Exams on Monday.  Please keep them in your prayers!

Christmas Thanks...

Last Wednesday the seminarians, faculty and staff celebrated our annual Advent Appreciation luncheon at which we expressed our thanks for the indispensable role of our staff and adjunct faculty in supporting the holy work of our Holy House.  

We were also privileged, if sad, to take the occasion of the retirement of Kaye Woodward to recall her service to the Seminary and to the Archdiocese of Boston since her graduation from High School!  Her husband, Frank (seen with Kaye, below) recalled how he would pick his teenage girlfriend up from the Boston Chancery to go out on a date!  

As a small token of our gratitude, we presented Kaye with a beautiful reproduction of a della Robbia Madonna from the Giust Gallery in Woburn.

Longing and Expectation

Here is my brief homily for this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Deacon House this morning.

The first time I saw it this summer I was surprised that it’s only four-and-a-half-feet-tall, but I should have realized it was imprinted on Juan Diego’s cloak, so it couldn’t be much taller than that.

The second thing I noticed was the block ribbon which Mary wears tied around her waist. Most of it was blocked by her arms, but just below her joined hands you see the two ends of the ribbon.

The black ribbon would have been a sign to Juan Diego and all who looked at the image on his cloak that this woman was pregnant, for the Spanish word for pregnant (encinto) means, literally, “wrapped in a ribbon.” Encinto.

In English, we use the words “expecting” as a euphemism for pregnancy, a word which reminds me of the second Preface for Advent, which reads, in part:

…the Virgin Mother longed for him
with love beyond all telling…

The longing of this pregnant Virgin is the very essence of Advent, and is echoed in Prayer Over the Offerings for tomorrow, which asks “that no infirmity may weary us as we long for the comforting presence of our heavenly physician.”

Yesterday I spent four hours in the surgical* waiting room of Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, waiting in hope and fear for news that the Divine Physician had worked through the hands of a thoracic surgeon to bring new life, and healing and peace to the one whom we loved.

And, you know what? He did. And David will be fine. And the virgin encinto will give birth to a newborn child, and he for whom we long, will come and save us.

Pictures from the Ministry of Acolyte

Somewhat belatedly, here are some pictures from the Ministry of Acolyte installation last week!  Many thanks to Bishop McManus for leading us in this wonderful celebration!