Homily for Friday, 5th Week of Lent

Homily for Friday
5th Week of Lent

March 31, 2023
Jer 20: 10-13
John 10: 31-42
Provincial House, N.R.

2 thoughts from today’s Scriptures, one from Jeremiah and one from John.

Jeremiah Lamenting Jerusalem's Destruction

(Rembrandt)

Jeremiah cries to the Lord about his persecutors, praying for the Lord to dispose of them and rescue him.  We’re mindful of the thousands if not tens of thousands of Christians under persecution today—in China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and elsewhere.  We pray that they, like Jeremiah, will persevere and that the Lord may be their “mighty champion,” that persecutors “not triumph” (20:11) but undergo a conversion of heart.

Jesus answers his opponents by pointing to his good works, which are his Father’s works (10:37-38).  Back in the 1970s there was a popular poster that asked, “If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enuf evidence to convict you?”  As followers of Jesus, we are charged to give evidence of his Father’s works in our words and actions, evidence that Jesus is alive in us.

Historical Consultors Affirm Fr. Swierc and Companions as Martyrs

Historical Consultors of Saints Dicastery Affirm the Positio super martyrio of Servants of God Jan Swierc and 8 Companions

(ANS – Vatican City – March 29, 2023) – On Tuesday, March 28, the Historical Consultors of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints cast affirmative votes on the Positio super martyrio of the Servants of God Jan Swierc and 8 Companions, Salesian priests, who were killed out of hatred for the Catholic faith in the Nazi death camps in 1941-1942.

The Positio was delivered on July 21, 2022, and had Fr. Szczepan Tadeusz Praskiewicz OCD as its relator, Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni as postulator, and Dr. Mariafrancesca Oggianu as collaborator. The vote of the aforementioned Historical Consultants concerns the scientific value and sufficiency of the documents, collected during the diocesan inquiry, as well as the ascertainment that the reputation of martyrdom is sufficient and constant. Based on this preliminary but essential judgment, the theological consultors and subsequently the cardinal and bishop members of the dicastery will be able to make their judgment on the martyrdom of the Servants of God.

The 9 Polish Salesian priests alleged to have been martyrs of Nazism Frs. Jan Swierc,  Ignacy Antonowicz, Karol Golda, Wlodzimierz Szembek, Franciszek Harazim, Ludwik Mroczek, Ignacy Dobiasz, Kazimierz Wojciechowski, and Franciszek Miska. As priests, these Servants of God were engaged in Poland in various pastoral and governmental activities and in teaching. They were completely uninvolved with respect to the political tensions that agitated Poland during the wartime occupation. Nevertheless, they were arrested and martyred for the very fact of being Catholic priests.

The fortitude and serene perseverance preserved by the Servants of God in the performance of their priestly ministry even during their imprisonment represented a real act of defiance for the Nazis: although exhausted by humiliation and torture, in defiance of prohibitions, the Servants of God were guardians to the end of the souls entrusted to them and showed themselves ready, despite human weakness, to accept death with God and for God.

The Auschwitz concentration camp, known to all as the death camp, and the Dachau concentration camp for Fr. Miska, thus became the site of these Salesian priests’ priestly commitment: to the denial of human dignity and life, Fr. Swierc and 8 companions responded by offering, through the sacraments, the power of grace and the hope of eternity. They welcomed, sustained through the Eucharist and confession, and prepared a great many fellow prisoners for a peaceful death. Such service, not infrequently, was rendered in hiding, taking advantage of the darkness of night and under the constant and pressing threat of severe punishment or, more often, death.

The Servants of God, as true disciples of Jesus, never uttered words of outrage or hatred toward their persecutors. Arrested, beaten, and humiliated in their human and priestly dignity, they offered their suffering to God and remained faithful to the end, certain that he who places everything in the Divine Will, will not be disappointed. Their inner serenity and demeanor manifested even at the hour of death were so extraordinary as to leave their torturers themselves amazed and, in some cases, outraged.

Celebrating Mass for Scouts

Celebrating Mass for Scouts

On March 25 I was invited to celebrate the Sunday Vigil Mass for Scouts (both boys and girls) taking a National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT) program at Durland Scout Reservation in Putnam Valley, N.Y.  I'm always ready to accept such invitations.  This was the 1st one in a good many years--since before I moved to Illinois and Maryland, and then the pandemic came along not long after I returned to New Rochelle.

This program had 48 participants in addition to more than a dozen adult and youth leaders directing the course.  About 20 came to Mass and were readily participative (which always pleases a celebrant) in some homiletic dialog about the gospel of Jesus raising Lazarus.

 I was told that the Scouts came from about 30 different troops, and some were from New Jersey and Connecticut besides the lads and lasses from our own Greater Hudson Valley Conference.

Outside it was rainy and cold (high 30s); inside it was definitely toasty, especially right in front of the wood-burning stove.

As I usually do when I can get up to Durland, I went for a long solo hike--in the cold drizzle.  I went east on the Red Trail as far as Lake Wiccopee, north on the lake road, then back into camp on the Yellow Trail, covering about 3 miles in 2.5 hours.  I didn't take any pictures; it was too dreary a day.  But the hike was good.  Judging from some footprints and other disturbances in the trail bed, someone else had been out on the trails earlier in the day.  But I didn't see anyone except some Cubs trekking around Sperling Pond.

Homily for 5th Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Lent

March 13, 2005
John 11: 1-55
Ezek 37: 12-14
Rom 8: 8-11
Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scarsdale, N.Y.

“Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11: 25-26).

Christ Raising Lazarus (Giotto)

In the 6th c. B.C. God inspired the prophet Ezekiel to envision a vast plain full of human bones, and to invoke the divine Spirit upon them so that they might come together and their flesh might be restored and the breath of God might bring them back to life.  That vision may be found in 37:1-10.  Then God interpreted this vision to mean that Israel, dead and buried as a nation because of military conquest and exile, would return to their land and live again as a nation, pleasing to God.  That interpretation may be found in vv. 11-14, whence came our 1st reading.

The Jews did not arrive at an understanding of personal immortality or of bodily resurrection—the survival of individual human persons beyond death—until a century or so before the birth of Christ.  The enduring life of the nation was as far as Israel could conceive of resurrection and immortality, such enduring life as Ezekiel prophesied.  But in our Lord’s time on earth, the immortality of the human soul and the resurrection of the body were hotly debated subjects, as the Gospels and St. Paul’s career testify.  Many of the Jews had come to believe that God must raise the dead for some final judgment, followed by eternal reward or eternal punishment.  Martha, the sister of Lazarus, asserts that her brother “will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24).

When Jesus states that he is “the resurrection and the life” of whoever believes in him (11:25-26), Martha reaffirms her faith and connects it to Jesus himself as Lord, Messiah, Son of God, “the one who is coming into the world” (11:27) from God to redeem the world.  She has already expressed her confidence in Jesus’ relationship with God:  “Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you” (11:22).  The “I am” of Jesus—“I am the resurrection and the life”—is a divine claim, an echo of God’s own name, YHWH, revealed to Moses in the burning bush (Ex 3:14).  It is a declaration that God is life and God gives life to the world in the act of creation and in the act of its re-creation thru redemption.

Martha’s sister Mary comes on the scene.  “Lord,” she addresses Jesus.  This title, Kyrios in NT Greek—as in “Kyrie, eleison”—is how the Jewish translators of the OT into Greek rendered the Hebrew word Adonai, so they would not have to write or pronounce the sacred name YHWH.  To call Jesus “Lord,” then, is to associate him with the divine name given to Moses, with the God who delivered Israel from bondage, established a covenant with them, and led them to the Promised Land.

“Lord,” Mary says to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:32).  On the most immediate level, as she speaks to him she expresses her confidence in Jesus’ love for her family, in his concern so often demonstrated for everyone, in his power to obtain favor from God—just as Jesus himself will pray at the tomb, “Father, I thank you for hearing me.  I know that you always hear me” (11:41-42).

At another level, John the Evangelist is telling us, we readers believe, that death and life cannot co-exist.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Death cannot stay in the presence of Jesus, of I AM, of “the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  Light drives out darkness.  Life conquers death.

According to the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 5:22-24,35-43||), Jesus had once raised a just-dead little girl, and according to Luke he had once raised a young man being carried to burial (7:11-16), which would have been the same day that he died, as is still the custom thruout the Middle East.  Now in Lazarus’s case, there is the notable difference that he has been dead and buried for 4 days.  He’s not “just dead” but so dead that there should be a stench (11:39).  Surely at this point the sisters would have been satisfied and somewhat consoled had Jesus visited the tomb, commended his deceased friend to God, and spent some time sympathizing with them.  Their hope is in the resurrection on the last day.

In a way that Martha and Mary do not express and cannot have comprehended, Jesus is associated in God’s plan with everlasting life.  He asks whether Martha believes that whoever believes in him will live and never die, and she answers, Yes, he is the Christ, the one coming into the world.  But she and Mary remain fixed on the present:  if Jesus had come, Lazarus would not have died.  Opening the tomb is pointless.  Their faith is imperfect.  Nevertheless, Jesus performs the last and the greatest of what St. John calls “his signs” (cf. 12:17-18), the miracles of his earthly ministry, “that the crowd here may believe” God has sent him into the world (11:42) to be its resurrection and life.  He calls Lazarus out of the tomb, and he sets the dead man free from the bands of death (11:43-44), even as on Easter Day he would himself shatter the chains of death.

The raising of Lazarus, like the earlier raising of the little girl and the young man but more definitively, is a sign of Jesus’ own resurrection to come, of his conquest of death, of the unassailable validity of his claim to be the life of the human race.  The little girl eventually died, and Lazarus and his sisters eventually died.  We’re tempted to say, “for good” and without any further resuscitation.

But the Good News of Jesus “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who [has come] into the world,” is that no one is dead “for good” except the sinner who refuses to believe.  “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Obviously this does not refer to the temporary sleep of bodily death in time and space (cf. 11:11).  Jesus himself experienced that for 3 days, so that we might not fear it and so that by his resurrection into the glory of heavenly life we might know that his word is good:  he is “the resurrection and the life.”

Our bodies shall die because of sin, as Paul says (Rom 8:10).  But if the Spirit of Christ dwells in us by faith, then death has no grip on us.  Our words and actions will be life-giving; the Spirit in us will be “alive because of righteousness” (8:10), because of our being in God’s favor, and “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to [our] mortal bodies also” thru the Spirit of Jesus dwelling in us and working in us.  Our mortal death, too, will be only a sleep until the last day.

Mary’s Miracles during the Ukraine War

Testimony from Bishop Ryabukha

(ANS – Rome – March 24, 2023) – The terrible reality of the war in Ukraine, with violence, bombings, and thousands of people fleeing; also the hidden and silent miracles that took place for so many simple people, the constant presence of Mary Help of Christians, and the zeal of a shepherd for his suffering flock—all this was concentrated in the customary Good Night thought offered a few days ago by Bishop Maksym Ryabukha, SDB, auxiliary bishop of the Donetsk Exarchate, to the Salesians at Salesian Headquarters in Rome.

“I want to leave a simple testimony: until last December 21, I was the director of the Salesian house in Kiev. We lived through the whole siege of the capital. For me it was like reliving the story of Don Bosco,” the prelate began in fluent Italian, as he arrived in Italy when he was 17, having finished Ukrainian post-Soviet schooling at the time.

The house in Kiev, which the Salesians did not build but received as it was, had a unique youth center at the local church level, but it was without a basement. “When the war started we asked the question: where to hide from missiles and bombs?” he continues.

The grounds of the Salesian house adjoin a state school, which, although linked to the Orthodox Patriarchate in Moscow, has always maintained a good neighborly relationship with the Salesians. In the first weeks of the war, it housed 320 people in its basement. “The director often called me asking that I go and talk to people because there is a generalized depression.”

Bp. Ryabukha recounts how during his visits he tried in every way to encourage and support those in need. Like the time he met an elderly lady with a blank look and asked her whether he could hug her, and upon receiving her consent, he felt her “melt” and return to reality in his hands. Or telling them, “I don’t know whether you believe or not, but the house you see from your windows is not mine, it is our Lady’s; therefore, nothing will happen in my house. For Don Bosco has promised that every person who crosses the threshold of any Salesian house is under the care of Mary Help of Christians.’ But since if something happens to you here, it ends up falling on my house as well, you can rest assured that our Lady keeps all of you under her custody as well.”

Of course, these were words of consolation and support to frightened people. But Bp. Ryabukha would also like to emphasize another fact: “From the beginning of the full-scale war until today, there is no one among the people who have passed through our house who has died in the war. This for me is a great miracle.”

The Salesian house in Dnipro is now a center that receives refugees and displaced people from various parts of the country. There is currently only one Salesian left there. He has been involved for months in accompanying these people as they flee the war. “The stories he reports are often terrifying, but so far he has managed to save the lives of many people, many boys. This, too, we believe is a blessing that Don Bosco gives us.”

Concerning his episcopal appointment as bishop of Donetsk, he says, “Perhaps the Holy Father chose me because he knows that the Salesians are good with the most difficult boys, and there is work there.”

And as for his apostolate, he identifies two major areas for the “pastoral ministry of paternity” which he intends to pursue: “The parish environment, because the presence of the priest, as well as the bishop, serves to make God’s presence manifest and visible. And then also the military: that today is another ‘parish’ that I have in abundance. Many of those guys are our alumni or the fathers or uncles of our students.”

One of these military men – part of the defense contingent protecting the Ukrainian capital who from the beginning of the war until mid-July came to the Salesian house in Kiev to shower or change – contacted Bp. Ryabukha again from the front. “He wrote to me, and as soon as he could he even phoned me, to thank me, and he told me, ‘I know you are praying for us. I got caught in a bombing raid and shrapnel from a bomb went through my nose. A few inches further and I would no longer be alive today. It was a miracle of our Lady, which you were always telling us about.’” 

Bp. Ryabukha’s last words at the end were only of thanks: “I would like to say thank all of you, and the Salesian Congregation, which from this heart in the center allows all of us to stay in the field. We are with one another in this mission that Don Bosco dreamed of and wanted to give us and that does not die.”

Homily for Thursday, Week 4 of Lent

Homily for Thursday
4th Week of Lent

March 23, 2023
Ex 32: 7-14
Provincial House, New Rochelle

In the 1st reading, God disowns his people.  He tells Moses they’re “your people whom you  brought out of Egypt.”  He tempts Moses by offering to make him the father of a new chosen people.

Moses isn’t buying it.  He reminds God that Israel is his people still, in spite of their sin, and it was he, not Moses, who liberated them.  Then he pleads for God to have mercy.  And God does.

In the collect, we invoked that same divine mercy.  We count on it.  We need it to take away our sins and liberate us from whatever binds us to evil in our thoughts, words, actions, or omissions.  We know that.

Further, as priests and religious we take on the role of Moses.  The psalm spoke of his stepping into the breach between God and Israel to plead for them (106:23).  We plead for God’s mercy toward his people, for Christians, for everyone.  We plead for God to have compassion on all who suffer from strife and disasters, and to save all from their sins; to lead us all safely to the promised land of the eternal paschal festivities (cf. Collect).

(Picture by W.C. Simmonds)

Homily for Solemnity of St. Joseph

Homily for the Solemnity of St. Joseph

March 20, 2023
Matt 1: 16, 18-21, 24
Salesian HS Sophomores

An angel appears to St. Joseph in a dream

The Gospels tell us only a little bit about St. Joseph.  He shows up only in the 1st 2 chapters of St. Luke and of St. Matthew.  Our gospel this morning was a little bit of St. Matthew.

In that passage St. Joseph was described as a righteous man, which means he always tried to do what was right in God’s eyes.  We see that in 2 ways in that gospel reading.  1st, he tried to separate himself from his promised wife with as little harm to her as possible as he followed what the Law of Moses required.  2d, when God told him the truth about Mary thru an angel, he obeyed what the angel told him to do.

So we see that St. Joseph was sensitive and respectful toward other people.  That’s an example that he sets for us:  respect for others.

And we see that St. Joseph obeyed God’s laws and God’s directions.  What we heard this morning is the 1st of several examples that St. Matthew records in his gospel.  Obedience is a key component in St. Joseph’s holiness.  That’s true for you and me, too.

I want to point out 2 other components of St. Joseph’s holiness.  The 1st is related to his respect for his wife, the Virgin Mary.  No doubt when he and Mary became what we’d call “engaged,” they expected to have a normal married life.  But that changed when Mary conceived Jesus “thru the Holy Spirit,” as we heard.  That meant that she belonged to God in a unique way, a way that required her to remain a virgin who belonged to God, and St. Joseph had to protect her and her child without having relations with her as her husband.  That was a unique calling for St. Joseph’s practice of the virtue of chastity.  All of us—you, I, everyone—is called to practice chastity or purity according to our way of life.  Sometimes that’s pretty difficult.  It must have been very difficult for St. Joseph, married to and living with the most special woman in the world.  His example encourages us to be pure in the state of life we’re in.  We can pray to St. Joseph to help us meet that challenge.

The 2d other component I want to point out is St. Joseph’s silence.  The Virgin Mary speaks often in the Gospels.  St. Joseph doesn’t say a word, not one that’s recorded.  Silence is essential for anyone who wants to listen to God.  St. Joseph was able to know and to do what God required because he was listening.  You and I need to observe silence at some moments of the day—whenever we’re in the chapel is one such occasion!—and give ourselves a chance to be in touch with God—which we call prayer.

So I leave you with 4 notes about St. Joseph that are examples for us:  respect for others, obedience, chastity, and silence.

         

 

Homily for 4th Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Lent

March 19, 2023
John 9: 1-41
Christian Brothers, Iona University, N.R.
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Assumption, Bronx

“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth” (John 9: 1).

(Gioacchino Assereto)

Blindness and sight, darkness and light—themes running thru John’s 9th chapter—and how one responds to Christ.

We responded to Christ years ago:  “Brothers and sisters, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph 5:8).  Christ enlightened us at Baptism, and we’ve reaffirmed that light at every Easter, as catechumens around the world are preparing to do at the Easter Vigil on April 8, and as we acclaim the light of Christ in the paschal candle and respond anew with our own baptismal promises.

The blind man whom Jesus heals receives full physical sight instantly.  His insight, his grasp of who Jesus is, comes gradually.  We follow his spiritual progress as he identifies Jesus 1st simply as “the man called Jesus” (9:11), then as “a prophet” (9:17), as an agent of God (9:33), finally as “the Son of Man” who is to be worshiped (9:35-38).

The man born blind comes to see who Jesus is and chooses to follow him even at the cost of status within the community of Israel:  the Jewish leaders “ridiculed him and said, ‘You are that man’s disciple. . . .  You were born totally in sin,” and “they threw him out” (9:28,34).

Jesus contrasts this with the willful blindness of Israel’s leaders:  “I came into the world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind” (9:39).

Everyone, then, is compelled to form a judgment about Jesus, to decide for him and against him.  That personal judgment will have the consequence of eventual divine judgment of salvation or condemnation, of final light or darkness.  Everyone must ask himself or herself, “Who is this Jesus?” and “What are the consequences of my recognition?”

If Jesus is only a good teacher, a wise man, a prophet even, I may take him or leave him as I might accept or not someone like Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, or Mother Teresa.  But if I see Jesus as the Son of Man, the one sent “that the works of God might be made visible” (9:3), the one who is “the light of the world” (9:5), the one who drives away the darkness of sin and the power of Satan, then I must listen to him, follow him, worship him, and “live as a child of light” and “produce every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth” (Eph 5:8-9).

Brothers and sisters, take in Jesus’ teaching in the Scriptures and in the Church, and continue to do your best to put his teaching into practice.  And Christ will save you from the darkness in which you were born and lead you to eternal light.

Salesian Missions Feeds Many Haitian Students

Salesian Missions Feeds Many Haitian Students

(ANS – Petion-Ville, Haiti – March 17, 2023) – Students attending the Salesian Timkatec schools in Petion-Ville, Haiti, have had access to improved nutrition thanks to a collaboration between Salesian Missions of New Rochelle and Rise Against Hunger, an international humanitarian organization that provides food and life-changing aid to those most in need.

During the second half of 2022, rice meals were distributed in the canteens of the three Timkatec schools, which students were able to take home even during school closures. After the summer break, in fact, the school was supposed to reopen in October, but the political crisis in the country, growing insecurity, and the resulting unrest led to a closure of all schools. The Salesians did not resume the school year until Nov. 28, when the situation had become more secure.

Guylaine Bastien studied nursing and graduated from Timkatec School. Now that she is a nurse at the school itself, she said, “As a nurse, I’m in charge of monitoring the health of the children at Timkatec. They really enjoyed the Rise Against Hunger meals. I have noticed a significant change in them; they now have more strength and energy and get sick less easily."

The first Timkatec school was established in 1994 to provide education to former street children. It was later expanded to include local disadvantaged children who had not had the opportunity to attend school until they were 8-10 years old. Vocational schools were added later to enable young people to learn a trade.

The same rice meal distribution project is also being carried out at Don Bosco Lakay in Cap-Haïtien. Here, too, thanks to the proven partnership between Salesian Missions and Rise Against Hunger, students have access to better and more nutritious food.

Don Bosco Lakay has faced many challenges due to the instability that has paralyzed the country’s capital. Sanitation problems have occurred and, due to contaminated water, cholera has spread. In addition, prices of food and other commodities have risen. For all these reasons, the Don Bosco Lakay has been closed for a long time. There is concern about the lasting impact this will have on young people, who have already missed months and months of school due to the closures imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rice meals are therefore helping to make up for the shortages caused by the political turmoil and rising prices in the country. Many young people, such as Lélé Desclasses, who is studying at the Salesian institute to become an electrician, thanks to this new, solid, and nutritious diet, can regain their strength, gain weight, and return to their studies with greater concentration.

The Salesians began working in Haiti in 1935 in response to the Haitian government’s request to establish a vocational school. Since then, they have expanded their work to include 11 main educational centers and over 200 schools across the country.

Mass of Thanksgiving with Salesian Family in Istanbul

Mass of Thanksgiving with the Salesian Family in Istanbul

(ANS – Istanbul – March 11, 2023) – Saturday, March 11, was a day of heartfelt animation and special memories. Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime celebrated the Mass of thanksgiving for the 120th anniversary of the Salesian presence in Istanbul in the cathedral of the city, with the religious and lay people of the vicariate apostolic of Istanbul. The presence of the Salesian Cooperators, members of ADMA, and some members of the Salesian Family in Istanbul gave a strong sense of unity to the Salesian charism. The morning celebration concluded with a festive lunch in the Evrim Salesian Institute. In the evening, the Rector Major visited the Salesian oratory for refugees. The day ended with a festive dinner with young people from various groups in the vicariate who attend Salesian works.

Homily for 3d Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
3d Sunday of Lent

March 12, 2023
John 4: 5-42
Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

(Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament)

In 1887 Katherine Drexel had a private audience with Pope Leo XIII.  Katherine was a young woman from Philadelphia, she was devout and practiced charitable works, as she’d learned from her parents, and she was the richest single woman in America, thanks to an inheritance.  She’d traveled around the U.S. and seen the needs of many people, especially African Americans, many of them former slaves or their children, and of Native Americans recently subdued by the Army and confined to wretched reservations.  She pleaded with Pope Leo to send missionary priests and nuns to help these poor people.  Leo, a wise and perceptive man, challenged Katherine:  Why don’t you go yourself to these unfortunate black and red Americans?

Katherine took up the challenge, became a nun herself, founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and dedicated her vast fortune to founding schools, including Xavier University in New Orleans, to educate and evangelize Indians on their reservations and impoverished, discriminated blacks in the South.  St. Katherine Drexel died in 1955 at age 97 and was canonized in 2000.

In today’s gospel, another woman was challenged by Christ at a well in Samaria and took up Christ’s message to bring it to the people of her town.  She became an evangelist who led them to Christ and to faith:  “Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me everything I’ve done’” (John 4:39).

(artist unknown)

Since the 2d Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Church and the Popes have taught us that all of us who belong to Jesus are missionaries.  All of us have a mission to share the Good News of Jesus within our families and among our neighbors, friends, schoolmates, and co-workers.  This doesn’t mean we have to go to a reservation or go door to door like a Jehovah’s Witness.  It means living virtuously and joyfully, and if opportunity comes, explaining why we’re joyful, what Christ means to us; testifying to his effect on our lives because he offers us living water that quenches our thirst for meaning in our lives (4:10-14).  Yesterday I came on a webpage that proclaimed, “You might be the only Bible someone ever reads.”[1]

Christ welcomes us, forgives our sins, invites us to intimate friendship with him, and pours God’s love into our hearts (Rom 5:5) so that we might come to share in the same eternal life that Jesus himself enjoys.  “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psalms to him” (Ps 95:2).

---

[1] OSV Live Catholic online, March 11, 2023.

At La Spezia, a New Picture of Salesian Holiness

At La Spezia, a New Picture of Salesian Holiness

(ANS – La Spezia, Italy – March 7, 2023) – The Salesian Family of La Spezia on the coast of Liguria offered to the whole community two formative days centered on the Eucharist and Salesian holiness. On Saturday, February 25, Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni, postulator general for the causes of saints for the Salesian Family, was invited for a meeting on the theme: “The Eucharist and Mary Help of Christians.”

At the end of the Eucharistic celebration on Sunday the 26th, Fr. Cameroni presented and blessed a canvas depicting several Salesian saints, in particular those linked to Liguria: St. Dominic Savio, St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello, Blesseds Michael Rua and Philip Rinaldi, who consolidated the growth of the Salesian presence in Liguria; Blessed August Czartoryski, who was ordained a priest in San Remo and ended his short life in Alassio; Blessed Laura Vicuña, Blessed Cefirino Namuncurá, the Venerable Stephen Ferrando, a native of Rossiglione, missionary and founder in Northeast India, who died in Genoa-Quarto, and the Servant of God Vera Grita, Salesian Cooperator, who lived in Savona. These are young people, religious, and a teacher belonging to the ranks of the “small and poor souls” whom St. John Paul II recalled in his apostolic letter Divini amoris scientia.

The joyful union of these figures confirms the strength and effectiveness of working together, inspired by the Gospel and the method of the Good Shepherd in the style of Don Bosco.

In the background of the painting, the courtyard of the Oratory at Valdocco and the church of La Spezia can be glimpsed, as holiness is an objective within reach of each of us and can be achieved only by creating positive relationships. The artist who painted the painting, Luca Pontassuglia, recalled, quoting Paul Klee, that “art reveals what is invisible to the eyes, but makes visible what is not always so.” This depiction is intended to inspire in those who contemplate it a path of spiritual growth within their own community.

Battle Threatens Displaced People at Salesian Work in DRC

Battle Threatens Camp for Displaced People at Don Bosco Shasha Salesian Work 

(ANS – Shasha, DRC – March 7, 2023) – Both heavy weapons of Congolese loyalist forces and displaced people have been placed in the territory of the Salesian concession – the area designated for plantations – of the Don Bosco Shasha center, about 25 miles southwest of the city of Goma, in Masisi territory.

“The Eucharistic celebration on Sunday, March 5, at the site where the displaced people are being received, was suspended following heavy gunfire on the highlands of the Salesian house and the camp of displaced people, who were hosted by the Salesians of Don Bosco in Shasha about a month ago,” reports JAMBO VIJANA, a magazine for the youth of the Salesian works of the Eastern Delegation of the SDB Congo Province.

“At the moment, the sounds of marching are heard within the Salesian concession and its northern periphery, where the loyalist force has settled in to confront the opposing forces, which are located a few kilometers away in the nearby town of Karuba,” the statement continues.

This military presence in the Don Bosco Shasha plantation is of great concern to the Salesians in Shasha because, in the current situation, the displaced people who have settled in this Salesian concession don’t feel safe. Despite this concern, the Salesians comfort this distressed population by saying, “This war in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is causing so many deaths and dehumanizing thousands of people, will one day come to an end.”

Fr. Kizito Thembo, SDB, director of the Salesian community in Shasha, invites people to unite in prayer to implore God’s help at this very difficult time, when every day brings a new wave of displaced people fleeing the fighting.

Frightened Displaced People Flee Don Bosco Shasha

(ANS – Shasha – March 9, 2023) – The use of heavy weapons by Congolese loyalist forces has thrown the occupants of the Salesian concession of the Don Bosco Shasha center into panic. As a result, thousands of people are on the run again, to unknown destinations.

Fear peaked on Tuesday, March 7, when rockets fired by Congolese loyalist forces stationed in the Salesian concession and its northern periphery reached the locality of Karuba, about 20 miles from the Salesian house, causing casualties among peaceful farmers in the area. The belligerent side from Karuba responded with artillery fire that fell in the Salesian concession.

According to reports from JAMBO VIJANA, the magazine published by the youth of the Salesian works of the SDB province’s Eastern Delegation, this resulted in the death of one person and two wounded, while people from the areas targeted by the shelling crossed the concession, wreaking panic and havoc. 415 children and youths from Salesian schools and 23 teachers immediately fled Shasha. 250 sharecropper families and 20 plantation workers also dispersed. 623 displaced families, or nearly 5,000 people, hastily emptied their makeshift shelters erected on Salesian land. The nearest health facility is without medical staff. In all war zones, there are fighting and a massive exodus of people. The stabilization efforts that had been initiated have been thwarted by yet another menace that has come to disrupt the lives of the displaced population.

Homily for Saturday, Week 2 of Lent

Homily for Saturday
2d Week of Lent

March 11, 2023
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
Provincial House, New Rochelle

“His father came out and pleaded with him” (Luke 15: 28).

Return of the Prodigal (Nikolay Losev)

The Word of God in the Scriptures and in the liturgy affirms again and again that our God is compassionate and forgiving, and no one else is quite like him.

Luke’s 15th chapter is devoted to this theme.  Jesus tells 3 parables:  the lost sheep, the lost drachma, and the most touching, the lost son.

Most of the times we read these, we may be drawn to the image of the shepherd’s, the woman’s, or the father’s joy or to the tenderness shown toward the errant sheep, the errant son.  A different insight may come from this:  “His father came out and pleaded with him” – the happy father begging the elder son.  He invites this son to do as he has done, to forgive his younger brother and receive him back into the family.

Our Father calls us to share in his loving, compassionate, and divine nature by forgiving our wandering brothers and sisters.  Unless we learn that, we remain outside while the festivities of heavenly joy go on inside.  We’re invited to forgive.  We’re invited to be God-like.  The invitation privileges us.  And God, in a sense, needs us to accept.  It sounds strange to say he can’t be fully happy until we accept, until we come into the banquet hall and are reconciled to our brother or sister, until we let a divine spark catch fire in our souls and warm us with love, compassion, and understanding.

Another way of viewing the scene is that we might fault the older brother for being jealous.  He thinks his little brother got a good deal, and he got nothing.  We’re cautioned not to be envious of someone else’s success, talent, or happiness—which is a too-common human inclination.  God calls for us to rejoice with the joyful, as the woman who lost a drachma wants her friends and neighbors to share her joy (15:9), and as Jesus says twice, the angels in heaven rejoice when a sinner repents (15:7,10).

Our Constitutions (art. 51) remind us to share one another’s joys, and in truth we do, thanks be to God.  I have the privilege on those occasions when I invite the confreres to recall their experience with a recently deceased brother, as I just did for Paul Chuong, to hear from them or others about the wonderful things our deceased brother did and the person he was.  Thanks be to God!

Fr. Paul Chuong Nguyen, SDB (1958-2023)

Father Paul Chuong Nguyen, SDB (1958-2023)

Fr. Paul Chuong Nguyen, SDB, a member of the New Rochelle Province, suffered a heart attack on the morning of March 8 and died in his room in Rosemead, Calif., where he had been serving in the Salesian community since 2014 as coordinator of the Youth Renewal Center retreat house. He was 64 years old and had been a professed Salesian for more than 43 years and a priest for almost 35 years.

Paul Chuong was born on September 4, 1958, in Saigon, Vietnam, to Nguyen Hua and Ho Thi Hong-Lam. He was one of seven children in the family.  Paul, his three brothers, and his three sisters fled Vietnam in 1975 among the tens of thousands of “boat people” and were fortunate enough to make it to the Philippines and thence to the U.S.

Following his immigration to the U.S., Paul resided in Sewaren, N.J., and completed his secondary schooling at Woodbridge Senior High School in Woodbridge, N.J., in 1977. He enrolled among the Sons of Mary at Don Bosco Seminary in Newton, N.J., on September 7, 1977.  He entered St. Joseph’s Novitiate in Newton on August 31, 1978, under the guidance of Fr. Carmine Vairo as master of novices and with classmates who included Richard Alejunas, Rich Putnam, and Dave Sajdak.

Bro. Paul made his first profession as a Salesian on September 1, 1979, at Newton and his perpetual profession at Elizabeth, N.J., on August 16, 1986.

Bro. Paul graduated from Don Bosco College in Newton in June 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. During his college years he assisted at the Boys Club on campus.  He did his practical training at Salesian Junior Seminary in Goshen, N.Y. (1982-1983), and Mary Help of Christians School in Tampa (1983-1984).

Bro. Paul (2d from left) with MHC students on a campout in 1983-1984 (Bro. Bill Hanna)

Bro. Paul studied theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, between 1984 and 1988 and earned a Master of Divinity degree.  He was ordained on May 29, 1988, at St. Therese Church in Linden, N.J.

Fr. Paul began his priestly ministry as dean of religious activities at Don Bosco College in Newton (1988-1989) before moving to Archbishop Shaw High School in Marrero, La., as DRA for two years (1989-1991).  He then taught religion/theology at St. Dominic Savio High School in East Boston (1991-1993) and Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, N.J. (1993-2000).

Fr. Paul left school work in 2000 to become a member of the retreat team at the Don Bosco Retreat Center in Haverstraw, N.Y., for six years. In 2006 he took an assignment as treasurer at Mary Help of Christians Center in Tampa until 2013. He was also vice director in Tampa from 2007.  From Tampa, one lay staffer writes, “He will be greatly missed by many here in Tampa, he was a such a good priest and touched many lives while he was here and even after he left.”

Also from Tampa, Lorraine Anctil, wife of Deacon Ed Anctil of Mary Help of Christians Parish, writes: “Fr. Paul was an inspiration to my husband and myself.  We became very close when he was in Tampa.  He went to the Vatican and sent us a signed note from the Pope and a papal blessing.  That was the kind of man he was, always concerned about others.  He was so spiritual and so funny. . . .  He will be dearly missed by myself and my family.”

In November 2004 Fr. Paul took part in a medical mission to Vietnam. On their return, the project’s coordinator wrote enthusiastically to the provincial, Fr. Jim Heuser, to thank him for Fr. Paul’s presence as “one of the most dynamic participants,” reporting that he “was on the Primary Care team and promptly became the troubleshooter, helping everywhere when team members were overwhelmed, registering patients and reestablishing order, bringing supplies and distributing gifts, assisting medical personnel… He was at his best when entertaining school children and directing interactive plays.”

Medical Mission to Vietnam 2009 magazine

The coordinator, Dr. Quynh Kieu, continued, “Most importantly he ministered to the spiritual and moral needs of the 159 team members, and for the first time since 1996, we enjoyed private Mass on Sunday….  Father Nguyen was the agent to elevate our medical mission trip to an unique spiritual experience.”

The program desired Fr. Paul’s continued participation, and so it happened for several more years.

At World Youth Day 2005, Cologne (source unknown)

For one year Fr. Paul served as assistant pastor, vice director, and youth minister at St. Anthony Church in Elizabeth (2013-2014).

Following the Salesians’ withdrawal from Elizabeth in 2014, Fr. Paul asked leave to move to California and became coordinator of the retreat center in Rosemead, while remaining a member of the New Rochelle Province.

Fr. Paul with youngsters at the Rosemead youth center

(source unknown)

In January 2017 Fr. Paul made national news with an open letter to President Trump, posted February 10 on the blog of the Catholic magazine Commonweal by Peter Steinfels.  In the letter Fr. Paul offered his U.S. citizenship to a Syrian refugee seeking the same asylum that young Paul had been granted when he fled Vietnam.  In the National Catholic Reporter (online 2/13/17), religion writer David Gibson quotes from the letter:  “Yes! I am a refugee.  I am an American and I have made America great in my own way for the 42 years since I was granted asylum in this great country. But now, I would like to relinquish my U.S. citizenship and ask that you grant it to a Syrian refugee.”  The President ignored Fr. Paul.

Fr. Paul (3d from left) and young SDBS 

with Abp. (later Cardinal) Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

Fr. Tim Ploch, who was his director in Columbus while Bro. Paul was studying theology and later was Fr. Paul’s provincial, described him as apostolic, innovative, and “insanely funny.”

Table conversation at the provincial house in New Rochelle was full of admiration for his zeal and his vast connections among the Catholic Vietnamese diaspora of the U.S.

Fr. Paul is survived by his parents Nguyen Hua and Ho Thi Hong-Lam, now resident in San Jose, Calif., and several siblings in both California and Vietnam.

Portrait at top: courtesy of Fr. Thien Nguyen, director in Rosemead

Funeral Arrangements

At Don Bosco Tech Gymnasium, Rosemead, Calif.

Wake, March 19: 4:00-9:00 p.m.

Mass of Christian Burial, March 20: 11:00 a.m.

At Salesian Prep, Richmond, Calif.

Mass, March 21: 11:00 a.m.

Burial following Mass, Salesian Cemetery

Servant of God Carlo Crespi May Soon Be Venerable

Servant of God Carlo Crespi 

May Soon Be “Venerable”

(ANS – Vatican City – March 8, 2023) – On March 7 the cardinals and bishops who are members of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints rendered a positive opinion unanimously regarding the heroic exercise of virtues, the reputation of holiness, and signs of the Servant of God Fr. Carlo Crespi Croci (1891-1982), a Salesian missionary in Ecuador.

The session of the dicastery examined not only Fr. Crespi’s heroic exercise of virtues, but also the whole process of the cause and the ecclesial importance of the cause itself.

Now Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the dicastery’s prefect, will submit for the approval of the Supreme Pontiff the conclusions of the session with the request to confirm the opinion expressed by the cardinals and bishops of the Dicastery in view of promulgating a decree of Venerability of the Servant of God.

The common feeling that the presence and witness of the Salesian missionary life of Fr. Carlo Crespi was a great gift, especially in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, is increasingly confirmed, “first of all, for the unfailing practice of the best human and Christian virtues and, second, for the extraordinary cultural work that he conducted in different fields of activity; for having guaranteed to children of the ‘popular’ working class an educational path of free schooling, he also founded a technical institute” (writer Luis Cordero Crespo).