Board Formation Session

Eight members of our Board of Trustees participated this afternoon in a Webinar on Board Orientation and Governance presented by In Trust.  I am deeply grateful to these busy people, so dedicated to the mission of saint John's Seminary, for their participation in this educational opportunity!

Upcoming Presentation on Mitis Iudex Dominus Jesus!

How the Anglican Communion Works

Last Friday, our entire house gathered for a fascinating presentation on Canon Law and the Anglican communion.  We were provided with a  fascinating insight into Anglican structures, traditions and practices by Professors Mark Hill and Norman Doe of Cardiff Law School along with our own Father Jim Conn, SJ.  

Kneeling before the Cross...

Here's my homily from this morning's Mass on the Holy Cross in our lives as a Seminary community.

So here we are, three weeks into the semester.  And if the usual dynamics have begun to set in, many of us have begun to become Israelites, with their patience worn out by the journey. 

“Why have you brought us back from summer vacation to work in this wretched place, where there is no beach or ocean?  Just classes and meetings and pastoral assignments and more meetings and early mornings and hours and hours in that chapel! We are disgusted with all this work!”

And while God the Almighty and merciful will probably not punish our complaints with saraph serpents, he does give us a sign.  The sign of the one lifted up on a cross, emptied for us, humbled and obedient unto death. 

And all we have to do is bend the knee to him, look up at him, confess him, and we will be saved.  Saved from our petty complaints and and pitiable groanings.  

Yeah, it takes a lot to get used to a new spiritual director.  Yeah, that philosophy stuff can be very hard to wrap your mind around.  Yeah, that guy next door plays the music too loud and the one on the other side snores so loud you can hear it in Brighton Center.  And yeah, there’s a lot to drive you crazy around here.
But yeah, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…that all who kneel and gaze upon him may be saved.

On the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

On this eve of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, it is good to recall these beautiful words of Pope Benedict XVI just a few years ago.

“What a great thing it is to possess the Cross! He who possesses it possesses a treasure” (Saint Andrew of Crete, Homily X on the Exaltation of the Cross, PG 97, 1020). On this day when the Church’s liturgy celebrates the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Gospel you have just heard reminds us of the meaning of this great mystery: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that men might be saved (cf. Jn 3:16). 

The Son of God became vulnerable, assuming the condition of a slave, obedient even to death, death on a cross (cf. Phil 2:8). By his Cross we are saved. The instrument of torture which, on Good Friday, manifested God’s judgement on the world, has become a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace. “In order to be healed from sin, gaze upon Christ crucified!” said Saint Augustine (Treatise on Saint John, XII, II). By raising our eyes towards the Crucified one, we adore him who came to take upon himself the sin of the world and to give us eternal life. And the Church invites us proudly to lift up this glorious Cross so that the world can see the full extent of the love of the Crucified one for mankind, for every man and woman. She invites us to give thanks to God because from a tree which brought death, life has burst out anew. 

On this wood Jesus reveals to us his sovereign majesty, he reveals to us that he is exalted in glory. Yes, “Come, let us adore him!” In our midst is he who loved us even to giving his life for us, he who invites every human being to draw near to him with trust.

Pope Benedict XVI  

September 14, 2008

Lead them to Jesus...

I offered this homily at Mass on Sunday at Our Lady of the Annunciation Parish in Queensbury, New York.

Who do men say I am? Jesus asks his disciples.

And Peter.  The impetuous Prince of the Apostles, responds with a simple, but profound, four word creed: “You are the Christ!”

You are one who the world has been waiting for.  The one who will teach us how to love.  You are the way we were made to live.  You are our way, our truth, and our life.  You are the Savior, the source of all life and the purpose of our being.  You are the beginning and the end, the one through whom we were made and the one who will judge us at the end of time.  You are the Christ!

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, expanded upon Saint Peter’s Creed in a similar fashion, when he prayed:

You are the Christ, my Holy Father, my Tender God, my Great King, my Good Shepherd, my Only Master, my Best Helper, my Most Beautiful and my Beloved, my Living Bread, my Priest Forever, my Leader to my homeland, my Pure Simplicity, my Peaceful Harmony, my Entire Protection, my Good Portion, my Everlasting Salvation...

So…

Do you know someone whose life is filled with chaos and seeks only peace...then lead them to Jesus...

Do you know someone who can’t forgive themselves or someone who hurt them...then lead them to Jesus.

Do you know someone who is afraid of tomorrow and can’t forget what happened yesterday? ….then lead them to Jesus.

Do you know someone who is lost and striking out in every direction at those who are around them?    ….then lead them to Jesus.

Do you know someone who is addicted, or enraged, or who trembles with fear?    ….then lead them to Jesus.

For he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  The one who seeks lost sheep and carries them home, who stretches his arms out on a cross and prays for those who nailed him up there, and who will come to lead us home from this valley of tears in the fullness of time.

He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God!  And how happy are those who are called to his supper!

Relics from the Sister of Charity of New York

I was honored this week to celebrate Mass with the Sisters of Charity of New York, who have presented Saint John's Seminary with a collection of major relics as they restructure the facilities used to house their retired sisters.  The Sisters of Charity of New York were founded by Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in the Vincentian tradition in 1817 and has been responsible for the establishment of much of the child care, health and education ministries of the Archdiocese of New York.

Too small to be counted among the tribes of Judah, this little Bethlehem Ephratha.

Worthy of being abandoned by even a righteous man, this little Virgin Mary.

A baby born in a stable, a feedbox for his bed, this little baby Jesus.

In his infinite wisdom, God chooses the littlest, the most broken and most forgotten: the weak to confound the proud.

It is the secret of life.  A secret whispered from the crib to the cross.

A secret not unknown to the daughters of Saint Elizabeth Seton: Sisters Rose White, Cecilia O'Conway and Elizabeth Boyle when 198 years ago they packed a little wooden building on Prince and Mott Streets with immigrant orphans, born of what the politicians were calling “the off-scourings of the people.”  A secret known as well by Sister Irene Fitzgibbon with just five bucks in her pocket and a dream of the first foundling hospital in New York.

Before Pope Francis was even born, they and you were going to the margins to find Christ and to dry his tears, in the orphan and the child and the sick.

You began by caring for the children, then built the first hospitals, established and organized the first schools and created the Mount, both the old one and the new one where we stand, all to help the little ones, the servants, the humble, in the model of she who is most Blessed because God has looked upon her in her lowliness.

And the Saints whose relics you consign to the care of St. John's and its seminarians, have been your constant and silent companions along this great journey of charity and mercy. Those who have carefully catalogued these heavenly intercessors, tell me that among the relics is a part of the wall discovered in our lifetime (but venerated for centuries) from the house of the Virgin Mary.

Mary has prayed for you.

Peter and Paul have prayed for you.

Clare and Theresa have prayed for you.

Scholastica and Benedict have prayed for you.

Vincent and Elizabeth (both Seton and Boyle) have prayed for you.

All the Saints have prayed for you.

And now, to their prayers, we add your newest friends, the fresh-faced seminarians who will pray for you in Boston, before these self-same relics. And all those prayers will accompany you holy women, as you continue to build the kingdom of God in this latest chapter of the Sisters of Charity of New York.

What will that chapter be? Your sisters in every generation have asked the same and dreamed.  But of two things you can be certain:

First, that you will know uncertainty. The same uncertainty they knew on Prince and Mott Streets and in the hundreds of houses in between.  For to God belongs the plan, and to him perfect charity.  We are but partakers of a small part of his greatness, and as you have learned in your long and noble history, the way of seeking to love the littlest and most needy is never a certain path.

And second, that you can remain assured of the prayers of your friends in heaven, and now the daily prayers of the seminarians in Boston, who will be inspired and sustained by your example and the heroism of your lives.  For you are the daughters of Elizabeth Seton, who wrote this in the last days of her life:

Most precious Communion [with God] 

all settled in one thought 

how he loves and welcomes the poor and desolate. ..

My will, my will forever!
Oh yes [Oh one] adored, your will, your will forever…