Celebrates Fraternal Communion
The Salesian Rule stipulates that every community in the Congregation celebrate a day of fraternal communion--"community day"--each year, and that each province do so, as well.
So each spring, at the time of the annual meeting of the directors and pastors of the province with Fr. Provincial and the provincial council, as many confreres as can do so gather to celebrate Province Day.
This year the celebration for the New Rochelle Province, dedicated to St. Philip the Apostle, took place on March 24 in Our Lady of the Valley Church and in a nearby restaurant.
As noted elsewhere in this blog (Feb. 12, below), the province is going thru an extraordinary visitation by the regional general councilor, Fr. Esteban Ortiz. Fr. Ortiz completed the visitation of the Orange community on the morning of March 24 and, fittingly, was asked to preside at the Province Day Eucharist.
Fr. Ortiz, in violet chasuble, presiding at Mass, with Fr. Tom Dunne (provincial) and Fr. Steve Dumais (vice provincial) on either side. At the left are Fr. Steve Leake (director of the Orange community) and Fr. John Grinsell (pastor of Our Lady of the Valley).About 85 confreres and candidates to SDB life came together for the Mass at 11:15 a.m. 51 priests concelebrated with Fr. Esteban. Young SDBs and candidates provided excellent music and served at the altar.
Fr. Tom Dunne, the provincial, preached the homily. Here's a summary of it, based on notes that your humble blogger took.
Fr. Ortiz, presiding today, is a link between us and the Rector Major, a sign of our intimate union with the entire Congregation.
I want to offer “a reflection on our gratefulness to God as a province,” to look at the gospel of the day (John 7:40-53) from the perspective of the province.
Jesus is in confrontation. There’s a division in the crowds, there’s suspicion on the part of the leaders, and the guards are caught in the middle.
Jesus perceives the threat he faces from the leaders (like the plot against Jeremiah [1st reading]).
The preaching of Jesus has been taking hold. But because of the threat he goes to Jerusalem quietly. When he is noticed anyway, he teaches—about “living water”—which gets a response: “This must be the prophet.” There’s a debate in the crowd, and the guards hesitate to arrest him: “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” They recognize that something from God is here.
Jesus’ own “pastoral plan” of preaching in the hinterlands and of a guarded presence in Jerusalem doesn’t work out, as some of his other plans haven’t (“Let’s go aside and rest for a while…”; his wish to sit quietly by Jacob’s well).
Jesus knows what’s prudent, but when he meets people, “he’s filled with pastoral passion and can’t say no.”
In whose eyes do we find the energy to follow our vocation? For Jesus it was the people; for us it’s the young. The young brought out of Don Bosco the power expressed in the dream that he had at age 9.
The Rector Major tells us to go back to the playground in order to rejuvenate our vocation. The young give us our energy. We encounter the Lord Jesus together with the young. On Province Day we give thanks to God for our vocation.
The gospel ends with “each going to his own house.” We’ll do that later today. Some in the gospel went home changed from having met Jesus. We hope to go home renewed by meeting Christ and the young.
A view of most of the SDBs and candidates who celebrated Province Day at Our Lady of the Valley Church on March 24.
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