St. Anthony Messenger July 2018

Sharing the spirit of St. Francis with the world V O L . 1 2 6 / N O . 2 • JULY 2018

IN THIS ISSUE:

At Home on Earth,

by Kyle Kramer PAGE 30

THE GIFT OF

LIFE JULY 2018 • $4.99 StAnthonyMessenger.org

FAITH & PHYSICS COMPASSIONATE PARENTING FROM SYRIA TO DETROIT

VOL. 126 NO. 2

JULY

2018

COVER STORY

COVER and ABOVE: Outside the Cleveland Clinic, pastor and parishioner are united by the powerful bond of compassion.

16 ‘The Greatest of These Is Love’ TOP AND INSET: CHERYL DEBONO/MICHAELANGELOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

By Richard Rohr, OFM

Love is our foundation and our destiny, says this noted Franciscan. But how can we remove the barriers between us and God?

20 Faith & Physics

By James Breig

Siena College physics students use 3-D printing technology to design and build prosthetics for children around the world. The results are life-changing—for both the recipients and the students.

32 All in the Parish Family: An Organ Donor Story

By Jerri Donohue

Father Mamich’s kidney condition was worsening and he wasn’t sure where to turn next. The answer, as it turns out, was in the pews all along.

26 Compassionate Parenting

By Shannon Evans

Faced with the demands of parenting, this couple finds the gentle advice of Jean Vanier transformative.

38 Finding Safe Haven in Detroit

By Patricia Montemurri

A Catholic agency helps resettle families from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq, helping their dreams of a better future become a reality.

44 Seeing through Jesus’ Eyes

By Peter Wilcox

Jesus calls us to open our eyes to his presence in our daily lives, creating a path to love of self and others.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 1

VOL. 126 NO. 2

Deceased people “carry with them the rewards of charity” for which God will reward them.

2018 JULY

—St. Francis of Assisi

SPIRIT OF ST. FRANCIS 12 Ask a Franciscan

12 54 POINTS OF VIEW 6

Is Filing for Bankruptcy a Sin?

Your Voice

Letters from Readers

14 Franciscan World

11 Editorial

14 St. Anthony Stories

30 At Home on Earth

15 Followers of St. Francis

54 Faith & Family

Third Order Regular Priests and Brothers

A Modern Exodus

St. Anthony and the Matinee

The Wisdom of Women

Macario Torres Torres, OFM

MEDIA MATTERS 48 Reel Time The Seagull

50 Channel Surfing

My Backyard Chapel

50 55

51 Audio File

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 4 Thank You, John

Moby | Everything Was 5 Dear Reader Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt 8 Church in the News

New York Confidential 52 Bookshelf Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars

51 Pete & Repeat 55 In the Kitchen 56 Reflection

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 3

Thank You, John

From his early days as an assistant editor (left) to his time as editor in chief (right), one thing never changed—John’s love and passion for this magazine and its readers.

P

erhaps you’ve heard the quote “Great things never come from comfort zones.” When I sat down to write this column about the retirement of our editor at large, John Feister, that quote instantly came to mind. I thought of it because John instinctively understood that on the other side of our comfort zones is often where the truly great stories are.

I remember a time in particular when John, my coexecutive editor (Christopher Heffron), and I traveled to New Orleans a few months after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina for a special section we were doing in the magazine. The three of us all had interviews set up with people affected by the tragedy in different ways. John was going to be talking with Franciscan Father Bart Pax, pastor at the time of St. Mary of the Angels Parish in the Ninth Ward—the area hit hardest by the storm and subsequent flooding.

John, who camped out in the parish’s courtyard, encouraged Chris and me to join him on his interview so that we could have a broader context in which to place our stories. The three of us viewed the mostly empty streets, passing boarded-up houses with spray paint indicating if the house had been checked or any bodies found. A child’s bike rested high up in a tree.

Experiences such as that, when we have been asked to step outside of our comfort zones, have helped shape who we are as writers, editors, and people.

For that, we are forever grateful.

During his 30-year career with the magazine, John interviewed hundreds of people, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sister Helen Prejean, and covered a wide range of topics. In the spirit of a true journalist, John was not afraid to challenge injustices he witnessed in both the Church and society, such as the clergy sex-abuse crisis, which he covered from the very beginning. One thing remained strong, though, and that was his love for the Church, the Franciscans, this magazine, and the power of a well-told story.

For that, we have all been blessed and wish him well in his retirement.

4 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

TOP to BOTTOM: John’s article on Archbishop Desmond Tutu made the September 1990 cover.

John interviewed Father James Martin, SJ, multiple times, most recently for last December’s issue.

John, Susan, and Father Bart Pax walk around the lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans in 2006.

ST. ANTHONY MESSENGER MAGAZINE ARCHIVES

—Susan Hines-Brigger and the St. Anthony Messenger staff

ST. ANTHONY

MESSENGER PUBLISHER

Daniel Kroger, OFM PRESIDENT

Kelly McCracken EXECUTIVE EDITORS

Christopher Heffron Susan Hines-Brigger

FRANCISCAN EDITOR

Pat McCloskey, OFM ART DIRECTOR

Mary Catherine Kozusko MANAGING EDITOR

Daniel Imwalle

EDITOR AT LARGE

John Feister

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

dear reader God Is There

I

t’s easy to find God in the beautiful. A crimson sunset or a vast expanse of ocean: In our awe, we feel the presence of something far greater than ourselves. But to relegate God only to what is pleasing would be wrong.

St. Francis found God in the lepers he embraced outside the walls of Assisi.

Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, devoted her life to those suffering along the margins. And Blessed Oscar Romero, who will be canonized on October 14, stood for those oppressed by an unjust government. In the faces of the beleaguered, God was there.

“God is everywhere” is the unspoken theme of this month’s issue. In the editorial, “A Modern Exodus,” our managing editor, Daniel Imwalle, writes about how faith gives us eyes to see grace in the faces of asylum seekers. God can be found in the work of engineers who create prosthetic hands for disabled children, as James Breig writes about in the article “Faith & Physics.” And God was behind Shannon Evans’ adoption journey, as she eloquently shares in her article “Compassionate Parenting.”

May each of us have the courage to embrace the other as Francis did. May we work to build the kingdom here on earth. God will surely be there.

Sharon Lape

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Susan Hines-Brigger, Executive Editor

Christopher Heffron, Executive Editor

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JAMES BREIG

SHANNON EVANS

Faith & Physics

writer

Compassionate Parenting

FATHER RICHARD ROHR, OFM

PAGE 20

PAGE 26

‘The Greatest of These Is Love’

writer

writer

PAGE 16

James Breig, a retired Catholic newspaper editor, is an essayist on subjects ranging from religion to flags, and a historian who specializes in the 18th–20th centuries. He also posts weekly Facebook articles about World War II to mark the 73rd anniversary of that conflict.

Shannon Evans writes for the website Blessed Is She, a community of women devoted to sisterhood and daily prayer. She also cohosts the Upside Down podcast and is authoring a book on the gift of weakness for Our Sunday Visitor. Shannon, her husband, and four little boys make their home in Iowa.

Father Richard Rohr, OFM, is a globally recognized writer and ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism.

He is a Franciscan priest of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 5

POINTSOFVIEW | YOUR VOICE Good Job, Father Pat and Company!

Many thanks to Pat McCloskey, OFM, for his lively, intriguing, and sweeping account of St. Anthony Messenger’s history in the May issue (“125 Years— and Still Going Strong”). As the best historical writing always does, Father McCloskey’s work leads us to views and vistas that awaken in his readers a healthy humility, which motivates us to learn more about the events, personalities, trends, and complexities that shape our lives. The dual time lines are a great help, providing interesting and meaningful context for the inspiring story of St. Anthony Messenger. Carry on!

Jim Littwin Chicago, Illinois

Anthony Art a Miss What in the world are you folks thinking with the disgraceful picture

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We grow as human beings if we learn to listen to the

animals. “...highly recommended.”—Library Journal 9781629190143 Paperback 192 pages $14.95

bluebridgebooks.com 6 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

of St. Anthony on the May cover? St. Anthony is usually depicted as a kind and gentle saint. You have depicted St. Anthony as an alien from outer space. I hope you will explain in the next issue why you disgraced St. Anthony like you did. You owe your readers, St. Anthony, and almighty God an apology.

Jane Appelman Augusta, Kentucky

A Veteran for Peace As a drafted Vietnam veteran (First Infantry Division, 1967–68) and now a member of Veterans for Peace, I took a keen interest in Mark Lombard’s article “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” in the May issue of St. Anthony Messenger.

Much of the text resonated with me, prompting memories of some of the pro-peace comments I have made over the years, especially to several reporters and photographers who were in Cleveland for the Republican National Convention two years ago.

In Lombard’s profile of peacemaker Father John Dear, the priest called out those “getting rich off these wars and killings.” It brought to mind my response to people who, upon seeing me in my US Army dress uniform and carrying a peace flag, thank me “for serving our country.” I thank them for the comment, but inside I am thinking: I did not serve my country. I served deceitful, lying, fear-mongering, war-mongering politicians and their war-profiteering bed partners, defense contractors. Those truly serving our country are the medics, doctors, and mental health professionals who work very hard to mend, as best they can, the psyches and bodies of those ravaged and savaged by war. They are the real war heroes. Not those who kill and destroy. That’s barbaric, not heroic.

With that said, I wonder if we should leave the door open to war just a little bit. The “elephant in the room” is Adolph Hitler. I shudder to think what the world would be like today if we looked the other way and did not try to stop the demagogue, since British

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sadly failed to make peace with Hitler.

Louis H. Pumphrey Shaker Heights, Ohio

The Healing Power of Prayer Thank you to Father Pat McCloskey, OFM, for his well-reasoned defense of centering prayer in the May issue’s “Ask a Franciscan” column. I started practicing centering prayer and other forms of silent meditation in 2014 and have witnessed many fruits of the Holy Spirit in my own life as a result. I, too, have been troubled by well-meaning but fearful Catholics who worry it is not safe.

If asked whether centering prayer is Christian or New Age, I can only echo the sentiments of the blind man healed in John 9: Whether it is of God, I cannot say. But what I can say is that I was impatient, irritable, anxious, ungrateful, and now I have been healed!

Tracey Hoelzle Fremont, Ohio

Ellis Island a Reminder I’m writing in regard to Susan HinesBrigger’s “Church in the News” column from the May issue of St. Anthony Messenger. Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego was quoted in the news story titled “Trump Looks at Border Wall Prototypes; Bishop Speaks Out.” The bishop referred to the prototypes reviewed by President Trump as “grotesque” and “a symbol of division.”

Bishop McElroy’s admiration for the Statue of Liberty is certainly commendable. But he should note that the Statue of Liberty is in the New York Harbor right next to Ellis Island, where many immigrants from the Old World came to be examined by immigration officers prior to being admitted to the United States. Until it closed in 1954, Ellis Island served as a bulwark against uncontrolled immigration to our country. Today, it is a national landmark revered by all the descendants of immigrants to our country.

Robert Miller Washington, DC

What’s the Plan?

I’m writing regarding Travis L. Middleton’s letter “Time to Face Reality” in the April issue’s “Your Voice” column. I’ve had many of the same thoughts myself.

I firmly believe in the right to life and that abortion is the worst possible answer to a problem pregnancy, but I worry at the inevitable fallout from a repeal of Roe v. Wade.

I’ve yet to hear a plan from those working toward a repeal that would provide a reliable alternative and eliminate the need for abortion. That may be because there just isn’t one.

Abortion isn’t like a poorly made baby crib or a dangerous piece of machinery that can quickly be taken off the market. The reality is that abortion isn’t going away with or without Roe v. Wade.

We believe that a life is always lost in an abortion, but the idea that women who seek them out will have to depend on back-alley charlatans or terrible do-it-yourself methods is very troubling—or should be—to any respecter of life.

So I ask: What’s the plan? A not-so-simple question, but a very important one that needs to be answered before any changes are made.

Judy Roy Livonia, Michigan

Jewish Wedding Customs I’d like to thank Father Pat McCloskey, OFM, for his explanation of Jewish wedding customs at the time of Jesus, which he wrote about in his “Ask a Franciscan” column in the April issue. As a rabbi who admires the Catholic Church and is also a subscriber to your magazine, I am always glad to read about the many points of close connection between our faiths. While Father McCloskey’s answer is correct in every particular, he also leaves out some important details that may contribute to a fuller understanding of the issue, and perhaps even help to bring Jews and Catholics a little closer to one another.

In discussing St. Joseph’s options under rabbinic law, once he discovered that his

betrothed wife-to-be, Mary, was pregnant with a child that was not biologically his own, Father McCloskey writes, “If he [St. Joseph] had wanted to, he could have accused Mary of adultery, which, according to the law of Moses, was punishable by death for both parties.”

Though this statement is technically true, I’m concerned it leaves the impression that, in general, rabbinic law was harsh, unjust, and unforgiving. Indeed, this is an ancient prejudice that the Church, as I understand, has repudiated.

The ancient rabbis actually placed strict conditions and limitations on the death penalty, which ensured that this punishment would very rarely, if ever, be carried out. In the particular case of adultery, for example, the deed must have been committed in the personal presence of two reputable eyewitnesses, and a specific warning not to carry out the deed had to be issued to the parties involved immediately before the act itself.

In general, the Jewish reluctance to impose this ultimate punishment was so great that a court that issued a single death penalty in 70 years—for any offense—was criticized in rabbinic teaching as a “killer court.”

An even more important factor to consider, perhaps, is the famous teaching of Rabbi Joshua ben Perachiah, who lived more than a century before Jesus or, according to a different Talmudic tradition, was actually Jesus’ instructor in rabbinic law. If the latter is historically true, St. Joseph was likely acquainted with this Rabbi Joshua. Rabbi Joshua taught, in words recorded in the Mishnah, a fundamental rabbinic text: “Judge every human being in a favorable light.”

St. Joseph surely followed this prominent rabbi’s teaching when he decided how to respond to Mary’s situation. When St. Joseph went ahead and took Mary as his wife despite her pregnancy, I’d like to think he was acting as a good and faithful Jew. Rabbi David Osachy Jacksonville, Florida

Correction: “Bookshelf ” editor Julie Traubert’s last name was incorrectly spelled in the May issue.

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 7

church IN THE NEWS

people | events | trends

By Susan Hines-Br ig ger

O

n the final day of the three-day meeting between Pope Francis and bishops from Chile regarding the handling of sex-abuse cases, all of the bishops offered the pope their resignations, reported Catholic News Service (CNS).

Bishop Juan Ignacio Gonzalez Errazuriz of San Bernardo issued a statement on May 18 in the name of all of the bishops. “We want to announce that all bishops present in Rome, in writing, have placed our positions in the Holy Father’s hands so that he may freely decide regarding each one of us,” it said.

The bishops will continue in office unless or until the pope accepts their resignations.

Pope Francis summoned the bishops to Rome to discuss the sex-abuse scandal in the country. In a letter the pope sent in early April, he characterized the meeting as a “fraternal moment with no preconceived ideas and with the single objective of making the truth shine in our lives.”

According to Auxiliary Bishop Fernando Ramos Perez of Santiago, secretary-general of the Chilean bishops’ conference, the pope read a document to the 34 bishops in which he “expressed his conclusions and reflections” on the 2,300page report compiled by Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta and his aide, Father Jordi Bertomeu, during a visit to Chile to investigate the scandal. Archbishop Scicluna is president of a board of review within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; the board handles appeals filed by clergy accused of abuse or other serious crimes.

“The pope’s text clearly showed a series of absolutely rep-

8 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

rehensible acts that have occurred in the Chilean Church in relation to those unacceptable abuses of power, of conscience and sexual abuse that have resulted in the lessening of the prophetic vigor that characterized her,” Bishop Ramos said.

The document in which Pope Francis gave his evaluation of the situation of the Church in Chile was leaked May 17 by Chilean news channel Tele 13. The Associated Press reported that the Vatican confirmed the document’s authenticity.

In the document, the pope wrote that removing some Church leaders from office “must be done,” but that “it is not enough; we must go further. It would be irresponsible of us not to go deep in looking for the roots and structures that allowed these concrete events to happen and carry on.”

The pope said that “the painful situations that have happened are indications that something is wrong with the ecclesial body. The wound of sexual abuse,” he said, “has been treated until recently with a medicine that, far from healing, seems to have worsened its depth and pain.”

Juan Carlos Cruz, one of three survivors who met privately with Pope Francis in April, tweeted, “All Chilean bishops have resigned. Unprecedented and good. This will change things forever.”

On May 22, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis will meet June 1–3 with “five priests who were victims of abuses of power, of conscience and sexual abuse.” Two priests who have accompanied the survivors “in their juridical and spiritual journey” and “two laypeople involved in this suffering” also were invited.

CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING (2)

On May 18, Bishop Juan Ignacio Gonzalez Errazuriz of San Bernardo, Chile, offered Pope Francis the resignations of all the bishops in Chile. Pope Francis summoned the bishops to Rome in May to discuss a 2,300-page report by Archbishop Charles Scicluna (right) regarding the handling of sexual abuse cases.

TOP LEFT: CNS PHOTO/JONATHAN BACHMAN, REUTERS; LOWER LEFT: CNS PHOTO/PETER RINGENBERG, COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME; TOP RIGHT: CNS PHOTO/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA, REUTERS

CHILE’S BISHOPS SUBMIT RESIGNATIONS TO POPE FRANCIS

CARDINAL SPEAKS OUT FOLLOWING DEADLY SCHOOL SHOOTING

VIOLENCE FOLLOWS OPENING OF US EMBASSY IN JERUSALEM

TOP LEFT: CNS PHOTO/JONATHAN BACHMAN, REUTERS; LOWER LEFT: CNS PHOTO/PETER RINGENBERG, COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME; TOP RIGHT: CNS PHOTO/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA, REUTERS

CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING (2)

I

n the wake of the May 18 school shooting at Santa Fe High School, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston issued a statement offering support and prayers for those affected. Eight students and two teachers were killed, and 13 others were injured.

The cardinal said that he and the entire archdiocese would “unite to support and offer healing to those affected,” adding that “as a society, we must strive for a way to end such acts of senseless gun violence in our schools and communities.”

The same day, Cardinal DiNardo, who is president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, also issued a statement on behalf of the nation’s bishops. “Sadly, I must yet again point out the obvious brokenness in our culture and society, such that children who went to school this morning to learn and teachers who went to inspire them will not come home.

We as a nation must, here and now, say definitively: No more death!” he said.

Palestinians run for cover from Israeli fire and tear gas at the Israel-Gaza border during a protest against the US embassy move to Jerusalem.

O

Mourners pray May 21 at a makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas.

GLENDON RECEIVES HONOR

M

ary Ann Glendon, former US ambassador to the Holy See, received the Evangelium Vitae Medal from the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture in a ceremony at the university on April 28.

The award, named for St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical on life issues, is given to “heroes of the pro-life movement.” It honors individuals whose efforts have served “to proclaim the Gospel of human life by steadfastly affirming and defending its sanctity from its earliest stages.”

n May 14, the United States officially relocated its embassy to Jerusalem, reigniting tensions and violence in the region. The Associated Press reported that Israeli forces shot and killed 57 Palestinians and injured more than 2,700 people during mass protests along the Gaza border.

In addition, a baby died from tear gas inhalation, the Gaza Health Ministry said, bringing the death toll to 58.

Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital and now feel that, with its embassy there, the United States cannot be a fair broker in the peace process with Israel. Many Israelis see opening the embassy as the long-awaited official recognition of Jerusalem as their capital and the fulfillment of a promise made by numerous US presidents to move the building from Tel Aviv.

The following day, the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, which includes Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, apostolic administrator of the patriarchate, and bishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches in the region, issued a statement reiterating the Catholic Church’s position that moving the embassy and “any unilateral move or decision about the Holy City of Jerusalem doesn’t contribute to advancing the long-awaited peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” reported CNS. “We believe that there is no reason that could prevent the city from being the capital of Israel and Palestine, but this should be done through negotiation and mutual respect,” said the statement.

Pope Francis addressed the situation in his May 16 general audience, saying, “I am very worried about the intensifying tensions in the Holy Land and the Middle East and about the spiral of violence that increasingly leads away from the path of peace, dialogue, and negotiations.”

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 9

church IN THE NEWS

FAITH AND FASHION

O

n May 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York opened the exhibit “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” which includes more than 100 pieces from top designers inspired

by Catholic symbolism and art, as well as 40 vestments and accoutrements from the papal office of liturgical celebrations, many of which have never been seen outside the Vatican. The exhibit will be spread over three locations in Manhattan.

Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, said, “It is our hope that the exhibition will promote an understanding of the symbi-

otic and sometimes mutually inspiring relationship between fashion and religion. Fashion’s engagement with Catholicism belongs to a lineage rooted in artistic tradition and continues the ever-evolving relationship between art and religion.” At a press preview in Rome on February 26, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that liturgical vestments and ornaments are often crafted to exalt a kind of “richness” and opulence so that they stand out from the everyday and the merely functional.

The ornate represents “the transcendent, religious mystery” because the divine is “splendid, marvelous, sumptuous, glorious,” he said.

WHITE HOUSE ESTABLISHES FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE

POPE’S LAMBORGHINI SOLD

O

n May 3, the National Day of Prayer, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the Faith and Opportunity Initiative as a way to give faithbased groups a stronger voice in the federal government, reported CNS. According to a document posted online by the White House after the order was signed, the initiative would provide recommendations on programs and policies where faith-based and community organizations could partner with the government to “deliver more effective solutions to poverty.”

Jonathan Reyes, PhD, Assistant General Secretary for Integral Human Development for the US bishops, said, “We look forward to working with the White House on its Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Overcoming poverty and challenging other social problems like the opioid crisis takes all hands on deck. The faith community has collaborated with government partners in this country at the federal, state, and local levels for a very long time. We pray that we will continue to have the freedom and the space to serve the least of these, as the Gospel mandates.”

10 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

A

2018 white Lamborghini Huracan coupe that was donated to the pope by the Italian carmaker last November was sold at a Sotheby’s auction on May 12 for $970,000. Pope Francis put his signature on the car and then put it up for auction to raise money for charity.

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FranciscanMedia.org/catholic-news

TOP LEFT: CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING, TOP MIDDLE AND RIGHT: CNS PHOTO/CARLO ALLEGRI, REUTERS, LOWER RIGHT: CNS PHOTO/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and designer Donatella Versace attend a press review in Rome for the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” Actor Priyanka Chopra (center) and singer Rihanna attend the New York opening.

POINTSOFVIEW | EDITORIAL

A Modern Exodus

As massive groups of people seek refuge from their tumultuous homelands, our faith remains a guiding light on how to respond.

A

mid the sparklers, backyard barbecues, and fireworks displays, American families gather to celebrate our cherished freedom on the Fourth of July, as well as some welldeserved time off from work and a chance to reconnect with loved ones. But not everyone here and in neighboring countries can enjoy the freedom available to many. It’s a precious thing, this freedom, and something easily taken for granted.

Although most of our ancestors were immigrants, a certain sense of deserving to be here lurks in our society, which can lead to xenophobia (fear of foreigners) and nativism.

Sure, nations have the right to control their borders, but as long as our immigration court system remains backlogged and broken, real solutions to the US immigration crisis will never be reached. Unfortunately, xenophobia is nothing new to humankind, so it’s hard to say if we’ll ever be able to totally uproot it. But, in the spirit of liberty, perhaps it’s a worthy goal to free ourselves from the shackles of fear and embrace—as St. Francis did with the leper—the strangers of our society.

Jeff Sessions sent 35 assistant US attorneys and 18 immigration judges to the San Ysidro crossing in San Diego. Sessions commented: “Don’t come here illegally. Make your claim to enter America in the lawful way and wait your turn.”

But what does it mean to “wait your turn”? The US immigration court system has, as of March 2018, a backlog of 692,298 cases. On average, the wait time for pending cases is 718 days—almost two years. Many people simply do not have the time, money, or resources to wait their turn, especially considering the appalling and dangerous living conditions they were born into.

Interestingly, President Trump, at the same roundtable in Ohio, questioned whether immigration judges are even necessary. “Do you think other countries have judges? We give them, like, trials,” he said. It’s true that many of the countries that people are fleeing have completely dysfunctional judicial systems, which fail to prosecute the horrific crimes that occur daily. As of this writing, 88 of the asylum seekers had been allowed to cross the border to plead their case. This is no guarantee that they will be able to stay, though. In 2016, only 38 percent of asylum cases were approved, with rates among Mexicans and Central Americans substantially lower.

A ‘PROPER ATTITUDE’

CNS PHOTO/DAVID MAUNG

NO GUARANTEES

Last April, a caravan of about 200 people from Central American countries (mostly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) completed a 2,200-mile trek to apply for asylum in the United States. In the above photo, a Honduran man rests with his 1-year-old daughter in Tijuana, Mexico, before making the final steps to the US border with the rest of the caravan to present themselves for asylum. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, El Salvador has the highest murder rate in the world, with Honduras in second place, and Guatemala in 10th place. All three countries have high percentages of their populations living below the poverty line, and El Salvador and Guatemala each had bloody civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s.

The response to the caravan from our political leaders has been fearful, aggressive, and nativistic. On May 5, a day many spent celebrating as Cinco de Mayo, President Donald Trump suggested that “we have to think about closing up the country for a while.” On May 2, US Attorney General

Published on April 9, Pope Francis’ third apostolic exhortation, “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), has some takeaways for how to respond to this situation. He wrote that some Catholics might consider the moral questions related to migrations of people as secondary to bioethical issues. “That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children,” he wrote. “Can we not realize that this is exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him?” (102).

Instead of judging from afar undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, get to know someone who has firsthand knowledge of what they are going through. A priest, an outreach ministry, or a neighbor might have a story to share that brings this issue into clearer focus. Listening with compassionate hearts to the stories of our immigrant brothers and sisters and praying for solidarity with them might help us view the immigration crisis in a different light. This Fourth of July, let’s celebrate family—the whole human family—and freedom in all its forms, which includes the freedom to be merciful and to welcome the stranger, as Jesus taught us.

—Daniel Imwalle StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 11

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS | ASK A FRANCISCAN

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

Is Filing for Bankruptcy a Sin?

Is it a sin and against my Catholic religion to file for bankruptcy? Does it violate the Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal? o, it is not a sin, presuming that you do nothing illegal to hide your financial assets and that you cooperate with the relevant civil laws about bankruptcy.

Most countries and states have set up laws—and in some cases special courts—to deal with bankruptcy cases. This is a distressing situation for everyone involved and may take years to resolve through the designated legal procedure.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the fruits of [human] labor. For the sake we read: “The seventh commandment forbids of the common good, it requires respect for unjustly taking or keeping the goods of one’s the universal destination of goods and respect neighbor[s] and wronging [them] in any way for the right to private property. Christian life with respect to [their] goods. It commands strives to order this world’s goods to God and justice and charity in the care of earthly goods to fraternal charity” (2401).

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ONLINE: StAnthonyMessenger.org E-MAIL: Ask@FranciscanMedia.org MAIL: Ask a Franciscan 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202

All questions sent by mail need to include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

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WE HAVE A DIGITAL archive of “Ask” Q & As, going back to March 2013.

Just click: • the Ask link and then • the Archive link.

Material is grouped thematically under headings such as forgiveness, Jesus, moral issues, prayer, saints, redemption, sacraments, Scripture—and many more!

What Does God’s Word Say about Addiction?

How do you help your child when drug addiction has taken hold of him or her? What does God’s word say about this situation? cripture’s most direct comment on this is that people should “live the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). Everyone should avoid all enabling behavior such as denying the addiction’s existence and should, as in the situation you describe, try to seek the professional medical help that a chemical addiction may require. There are no guarantees of success.

Addicted people are still children of God. They can never forfeit that status although they may forfeit their right to live as free persons if, for example, they kill someone in order to obtain money to feed their addiction.

Society rightfully takes preventive measures to protect innocent parties from the negative effects of a person’s addiction— whether it be to alcohol, other drugs, gambling, predatory sexual behavior, or some other type of addiction.

Every addiction initially promises greater freedom but delivers only increased slavery.

All the best as you deal with your child’s addiction. Tough love may not seem like genuine love, but it is.

Some situations require tough love.

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12 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

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Father Pat welcomes your questions!

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Pat McCloskey, OFM

‘Two-Edged Sword’

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A religious goods catalog offers “personal reliquaries” and “personal monstrances.” I thought a monstrance could be used only in a church or chapel. Can someone own one and display a consecrated host elsewhere? I cannot imagine exposing the Blessed Sacrament during daily activities as being acceptable. Also, what about “personal reliquaries”? ’m afraid this reflects a consumer culture gone wild, one that seeks to turn the Eucharist into a possession to be hoarded rather than a gift that places Christians in communion with God and with one another.

A monstrance with a consecrated host can be carried outdoors in a Corpus Christi procession, but that communal action reflects God’s desire to influence all of our lives, not simply our praying inside church or chapel walls. The Church has the right to—and does—regulate the circumstances under which the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for veneration.

Reliquaries, containers to hold a relic of a saint or a blessed, are not intended as treating a relic as one more consumer product to be acquired. Most relics these days are given to a community of people, not for the exclusive use of an individual.

Private property has its limits. What you describe seems to reject those limits in regard to the Eucharist or relics.

The National Shrine of St. Anthony is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Consecrated in 1889, it includes a first-class relic of St. Anthony and serves as a center for daily prayer and contemplation.

The Franciscan friars minister from the shrine. To help them in their work among the poor, you may send a monetary offering called St. Anthony Bread. Make checks or money orders payable to “Franciscans” and mail to the address below.

Every Tuesday, a Mass is offered for benefactors and petitioners at the shrine. To seek St. Anthony’s intercession, mail your petition to the address below. Petitions are taken to the shrine each week. viSit our webSite to:

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‘Personal Monstrances’?

BREAD s

FRANK JASPER, OFM

What does Scripture mean when it uses the expression two-edged sword? How many times does it use this term? two-edged sword cuts in both directions—as opposed to a sabre, which is sharp on only one side of the blade. Nelson’s Complete Concordance of the New American Bible has seven entries. Ehud made himself a onefoot-long, two-edged dagger (Jgs 3:16).

Psalm 149:6 speaks of God’s people as praising the Lord with their mouths and holding two-edged swords in their hands. Proverbs 5:3 says that the lips of an adulterous woman drip with honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil.

Even so, “in the end, she is as bitter as wormwood, as sharp as a two-edged sword” (5:4). The same, of course, is true of an adulterous man. According to Sirach 21:3, “Every offense [sin] is a two-edged sword; when it cuts, there can be no healing.” Repentance is always possible but must begin with acknowledging why the person needs to repent.

Perhaps the best-known biblical reference is Hebrews 4:12, which describes the word of God as “living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” The Book of Revelation’s author recounts a vision in which “one like a son of man” (1:13a) appears with a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth (v. 16). The same author is later told to write to the angel of the church in Pergamum that “the one with the sharp two-edged sword says this” (2:12), rebuking the Christians there for several offenses.

Taken together, all these references except the first one above indicate the decisiveness of God’s word and God’s ways; they cannot be avoided or explained away.

They will prevail.

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ST. ANTHONY

StAnthony.org

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mAil poStAl communicAtionS to:

St. Anthony Bread 1615 Vine St. Cincinnati, OH 45202-6498

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StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 13

SPIRITOFST.FRANCIS “Blessed be God in all his designs. . . . Thank God ahead of time.”

—Blessed Solanus Casey

FRANCISCAN WORLD

By Pat McCloskey, OFM

He encouraged everyone to live out their Godgiven freedom.

THE QUOTE at the top of this page comes from a Capuchin Franciscan priest who never received permission to preach doctrinal sermons or hear confession. His entire life eloquently encouraged many broken and anxious people.

Because Barney Casey was no scholar, he served as porter and sacristan in several places, most famously at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Detroit’s east side. He also worked in its soup kitchen.

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he Brothers of Penance go back to the 13th century, men committed to a Gospelbased life and serving specific needs within the Church and society. At various times and places, they were under the leaders of the First Order.

Pope Nicholas V approved their rule in 1447; it was revised with papal approval in 1521, 1927, and 1982.

Even though the Third Pope Nicholas V Order Regular (TOR) almost did not survive the French Revolution, TOR friars in 1847 established St. Francis Academy (later College and now University) in Loretto, Pennsylvania. It is the oldest Franciscan college-level school in the

St. Anthony and the Matinee

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—Pat McCloskey, OFM

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ST. ANTHONY STORIES

An estimated 20,000 people passed by his casket after he died in 1957. More than 65,000 people attended his beatification Mass in Detroit on November 18, 2017. His feast is July 30.

WANT MORE? Learn about your saints and blesseds by going to: SaintoftheDay.org

United States. In 1946, the Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus established the College of Steubenville (now called Franciscan University).

TOR priests and brothers serve in parishes, high schools, retreat centers, and chaplaincies.

The TORs, who have two provinces headquartered in Pennsylvania (Loretto and Hollidaysburg) and a vice province in Texas, are also active in the Franciscan Federation of the Sisters and Brothers of the Third Order Regular Family.

Mabé, or blister pearls, are half-pearls that have grown flush against the inside of a pearl oyster’s shell.

14 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

hile attending a matinee at the Wang Center in Boston, I realized that one of my mabé pearl earrings was missing! There are nearly 3,500 people who attend the Wang Center for each performance. I was with a group and did not want to take time to report it to lost and found. I went home so upset about my expensive earring. I prayed to St. Anthony and looked for the phone number of the Wang Center online.

It could be anywhere in Boston, probably crushed under a wheel of a car, I thought as I dialed the number. No one at the theater had seen the earring. I prayed to St. Anthony again and went on with my day.

About three days later, I received a call from the theater asking me to describe my earring. I described it, and the theater worker replied, “We have it here.” I sent her a prepaid mailer, and my beautiful earring was returned to me without a scratch. I promptly sent a donation to St. Anthony’s Bread for the Poor.

—Maria Izzi Greene, Narragansett, Rhode Island

FR. DUC PHAM

BLESSED SOLANUS CASEY

UPPER LEFT: FRANK JASPER, OFM; TOP: WIKIMEDIA/PETER PAUL RUBENS/MUSEUM PLANTIN-MORETUS; BOTTOM: CREATIVE COMMONS/CHRISTINA RUTZ

Third Order Regular Priests and Brothers

FREE to

FOLLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS

‘Father Mores’ Gives His All

SUBSCRIBERS

“When I started to learn more about Francis, I really fell in love.”

FR. DUC PHAM

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hen a missioner sets out for a new land, he or she never quite knows what to expect. That’s the case for Macario Torres Torres, OFM. He set out from his native Mexico to be a missionary to the United States. He is currently on the pastoral staff of St. John the Baptist (San Juan Bautista) Parish in Joliet, Illinois. His parish is booming with Hispanic parishioners who are grateful to have someone from back home among them. It’s a lot like the German and Irish priests who bravely came to so many US parishes in the 1800s.

“I grew up with the Franciscans,” he says of his home parish in Guanajuato, Mexico. When young Macario told his very religious parents he felt called to the priesthood, they frowned. “We’re a big family, and they needed my financial support,” he says. He found work around his Franciscan parish, and at age 14, upon a priest’s advice, he joined the Franciscans.

Early on, he learned Latin, Greek, Italian, and French, amid his study of philosophy and theology. One day, he met some friars from the United States.

“They were attending an ordination, and they visited some Franciscans,” he recalls. Upon meeting Friar Macario, they started recruiting him to come to the United States, where the need for Spanish-speaking friars is great. “I didn’t speak good English,” he recalls.

“At some point, I started feeling a desire to come to this country,” he says, “because of the vocation shortage here and because I had always wanted to be a missionary. God led me to this country.” He came in 2008 to the Sacred Heart Province of Franciscans, OFM, based in St. Louis, Missouri.

He started in San Antonio, Texas,

Macario Torres Torres, OFM

studying English, then went to Joliet, Illinois, while still in the early stages of Franciscan formation. He went on to the novitiate, then to studies among the friars at Chicago Theological Union.

He goes by the nickname “Father Mores”—everyone in Mexico has a nickname! His is an affectionate joke in the United States, a play on the English word more—he gives his all—and his brown (moreno in Spanish) skin. He relates to the friars among whom he came to serve, calling them “humble, compassionate, welcoming, inclusive.”

It speaks to his Franciscan calling, one of the heart: “When I started to learn more about Francis, I really fell in love.”

His community in Mexico had been very insular—the same culture, language, clothes, religion, even the same problems. “Coming to this country, I almost panicked.” He met African Americans for the first time.

He was amazed at how tall people are.

And he saw white people—“that really got my attention.” Those experiences of being different, shorter, brownskinned, Spanish-speaking, are behind his resolve: “I want to be very inclusive, very welcoming. We are in the image and likeness of God, no matter what language, what nationality. All of us belong to God.” The story of St. Francis and the leper really speaks to him.“He didn’t want to be around them, but, at some point, he saw that they needed compassion, love: They’re still human beings; they are our brothers and sisters,” he says. “And instead of isolating them, we need to welcome them.” When we welcome those different from us, “we can find some sweetness, and that sweetness comes only from God.” —John Feister

On the go?

St. Anthony Messenger has a digital edition that is available to all print subscribers.

• Does not change your print subscription • Easy to register at: StAnthonyMessenger.org

Want more inspiration?

Visit the website FranciscanMedia.org for: • Saint of the Day • Minute Meditations • Family resources • Prayer downloads • Information on the seven sacraments

FranciscanMedia.org StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 15

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16 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

LOVE

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THE GREATEST OF THESE IS

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By Richard Rohr, OFM

Love is our foundation and our destiny, says this noted Franciscan. But how can we remove the barriers between us and God?

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t’s so simple that it’s hard to teach. Our Christian mission is to awaken us to what we already know is true: The foundation of everything is love because “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). God’s love in us is seeking to love and be loved and to bring healing and wholeness to a suffering world. Love is our basic identity in God. My own experience of God’s love has inspired me to be a channel of divine love for others. I try to remove the barriers—created by immature religion, bad teaching, culture, ego, and our own woundedness—that keep us from knowing God’s love for ourselves. My goal is to take us back to the basics that have been

forgotten for so long and for so many reasons. Jesus summed up the entire law and prophets with these words: “Love God and love others” (Mt 22:36–40; Lk 10:25–28; Mk 12:28–31).

Faith in God is not just faith to believe in spiritual ideas.

It’s to have confidence in love itself. It’s to have confidence in reality itself. At its core, reality is OK. God is in it. God is revealed in all things. The most powerful, most needed, and most essential teaching is always about love. Love is our foundation and our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As St. Paul said, “So faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit, who, according to Jesus, “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (Jn 14:26). Love is who you are.

All I can do is remind you of what you already know deep within your True Self and invite you to live connected to this Source. John the Evangelist wrote, “God is love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him or her” (1 Jn 4:16). The Judeo-Christian creation story says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God—who is love (Gn 1:26 and Gn 9:6). Out of the Trinity’s generative, loving relationship, creation takes form, mirroring its Creator.

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PHOTO CREDIT HERE

Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower.

We have heard this phrase so often that we don’t get the existential shock of what “created in the image and likeness of God” is saying about us. If this is true—and I believe it is—our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive, and, as it is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is “very good” (Gn 1:31). We do have a good place to go home.

We must overcome the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness, but union—to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness “sin.” God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. “My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God” (1 Jn 3:2).

I can remember visiting my Catholic parish as a young boy and seeing all the statues, paintings, color, music, incense, and candles. It was a mystical place—and I was in awe. It felt like a different world. To me it felt like the real world.

That real-world feeling echoes my earliest memory of a God-like experience: I was probably 5 years old. I was in the living room. All the family members were in the kitchen talking, and the kitchen was bright. But the living room was dark with just the Christmas tree lit. I had the sense that the world was good, I was good, and I was part of the good world; and I just wanted to stay there. I remember feeling very special,

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WE ARE MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE

very chosen, very beloved, and it was my secret. The family in the kitchen didn’t know what I was knowing.

Our first spiritual experience can be very ego-inflating.

But, like the Apostle Paul, we know that chosenness is for the sake of letting everybody else know they are chosen too. I have spent my adult life doing just that—reminding people of their inherent belovedness.

My memory of the Christmas tree was like being taken to another world, the real world, the world as it’s meant to be, where the foundation is love, and God is in everything. It’s a benevolent universe where God is on our side and God is more for us than we are for ourselves, where “my deepest me is God,” as Catherine of Genoa says.

YOUR TRUE SELF

Your True Self is who you are and always have been in God; and at its core, your True Self is love itself. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. Most of human history has referred to the True Self as your “soul” or “your participation in the eternal life of God.” The great surprise and irony is that “you,” or who you think you are, has nothing to do with your True Self ’s original creation or its ongoing existence.

This is disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you more; and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less. All you can do is nurture your True Self.

According to Paul (Rom 8:28), becoming my True Self seems to be a fully cooperative effort, and this is affirmed in my own limited experience. God never forces us or coerces us toward life or love by any threats whatsoever. God lures us, yes—coerces us, no (Jer 20:7; Mt 11:28–30). God is utterly free and utterly respects our own human freedom.

Love cannot happen in any other way. Love flourishes inside freedom and then increases that freedom even more. “For freedom Christ has set us free!” shouts Paul in his critique of all legalistic religion (Gal 5:1).

We are allowed to ride life’s and love’s wonderful mystery for a few years—until life and love reveal themselves as the same thing, which is the final and full message of the risen Christ. Life morphs into a love that is beyond space and time. Christ literally “breathes” shalom and forgiveness into the universal air (Jn 20:22–23).

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GOD IS GOOD

I would like to share an especially powerful experience I had in the Franciscan novitiate. I was kneeling in the choir alone.

Suddenly, I felt chains fly in all directions. The Scripture that I had read that day was from Philippians 3:7: “What I once considered an asset, now I consider a liability. The law that I thought was going to save me, now is my curse” (I’m paraphrasing).

Suddenly, I knew that God’s love did not depend on my following all these laws and mandates or being worthy.

I knew I wasn’t worthy, and yet here I was experiencing absolute grace and absolute acceptance. The whole system I’d grown up with had implied that God will love you if you change. That day I realized God’s love enables and energizes us to change.

I had that boyhood secret discovered in front of the Christmas tree: that I’d been taken over to another world, which was really this world as it truly is. I’d realized, My God, this is what everybody is living inside of—and they don’t see it!

Now, once again in the novitiate, I somehow knew that I was good, God is good, life is good. And I didn’t have to achieve that goodness by any performance whatsoever. I am saved by grace. Grace is everything! In that one moment, I understood the Gospel.

I can’t say that in the intervening years I’ve always believed this on a daily basis. Just like the biblical writers and the saints, I would get it and then lose it for a while.

Sometimes I would let irritations, resentments, and annoyances eat me alive and would not be able to live in the state of grace and inner freedom. Or I’d get caught up in the drama of life—even good and exciting things—and wouldn’t have time for God’s unconditional love.

Love was still and always flowing through me, but I wasn’t resting in it or consciously enjoying it. Even now there’s a temptation to think I have to earn God’s love. There is still an inner voice that says, I am not worthy enough or good enough. And that’s where I continue to grow in love and faith—by not believing those negative voices and trusting grace’s absolute givenness.

Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives, Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .

In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . .

May we live in this love.

May we never doubt this love.

May we know that we are love, That we were created for love, That we are a reflection of you, That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.

May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness That we are because you are.

This article was adapted from Franciscan Father Richard Rohr’s book Essential Teachings on Love (Orbis Books).

Editors Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger contributed to this article. Learn more about Richard and the Center for Action and Contemplation at cac.org.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 19

Faith & PHYSICS

By James Breig

he day Karissa put on her new hand, her eyes brightened and a smile spread across her face. Born without a right hand, the 9-year-old thanked students from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, who worked the miracle using a 3-D printer. Her prosthetic hand “helps me so much when I need to do something I can’t do without it, like picking up things,” she says. “My friends really like it. They think it’s really cool.”

Her mother, Maria, said other artificial hands that Karissa had tried were heavy and cumbersome, so she chose to get along without them. Then the family learned about e-NABLE, a network of volunteers who design free prosthetic devices for children across the globe. They contacted the e-NABLE chapter at Siena. Within a week, students visited Karissa’s home in Stillwater, New York, to explain the process and take her measurements. “We think it’s a great program,” her mother says. “The students are fantastic and keep in touch with us.”

Lending a helping hand and giving a hand up can be figurative expressions of Christian charity. At Siena, however, the sayings are used literally by physics students who design and 3-D print custom hands and arms through e-NABLE, which has provided some 2,000 prostheses to people in 45 countries since 2013.

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The e-NABLE organization exists because Ivan Owen, codesigner of the first 3-D printed mechanical hand, chose not to patent his design, allowing it to be used without cost.

Started at the Rochester Institute of Technology, e-NABLE quickly spread to other universities. The first child to get a prototype was Liam, who lives in South Africa. His success led to the rapid growth of the program; an estimated 8,000 volunteers now are involved.

LIFE-CHANGING FOR ALL INVOLVED

While producing artificial hands, physics student Miranda Marnes—who graduated in 2017—and her classmates learned how rewarding it is to see a child put on a prosthesis and grin in delight. “Words cannot describe the feeling of knowing I’m making a difference in children’s lives,” she says. Marnes believes the project mirrors Siena’s Catholic, Franciscan values, which she summarizes in four words: diversity, optimism, respect, and service. She adds that “e-NABLE certainly upholds these Franciscan values, and we devote all of our time to those in need.”

For instance, the students created a limb for a Ugandan child named Veronica, who lost part of her arm in a fire. Two students brought the prosthesis to her in Africa, a trip under-

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SIENA COLLEGE

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Siena College physics students use 3-D printing technology to design and build prosthetics for children around the world. The results are life-changing—for both the recipients and the students.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SIENA COLLEGE

As Karissa uses her prosthesis for the first time, her joy is boundless.

prosthesis in the years that followed, Bellis written by Siena donors, while classmates realized how much good the students were watched from campus. In appreciation, the doing. “How amazing [they] are at taking girl waved to her distant friends with her the reins on these projects and seeing them new hand. Says Marnes, “I have received through from start to finish,” he says. “It’s many comments about how I changed so gratifying to see their impact on others, Veronica’s life, but it is really Veronica who as well as the impact this had on them.” has changed mine.”

Dr. Matthew Bellis is the faculty advisor Alyx Gleason—class of 2017—signed to the group, which was launched after the up for e-NABLE simply to learn about 3-D printing, but she soon became Fairley’s college’s School of Science bought a 3-D successor. Gleason says she immediately printer. “One of the first students to play grasped the underlying notion: offeraround with it was Joe Fairley,” he recalls. ing devices for free to recipients that can “I don’t think he knew he would work with prosthetics, but he stumbled onto a be made for around $50. “Plus,” she says, “instead of being bulky, which a lot of network of volunteers who 3-D print prosyoung kids complain about, they are lighttheses for those in need—primarily kids.” weight and can be unique to the recipient.”

Intrigued by what he saw, Fairley produced At first, she admits, “I didn’t actually an Iron Man-themed prosthesis to please Karissa proudly stands with designers Alyx a youngster in Ohio. Shortly after the boy Gleason (left) and Miranda Marnes (right). think we would be able to make a working put on the device, he used his new hand to prosthesis for someone.” Nevertheless, she pressed on. Her first steps were to marry the project to the throw out the first pitch at a minor-league game. college by making it an official on-campus club and getting After Fairley graduated a few years ago, successive physmore physics students involved. That transition wasn’t easy, ics students took up the cause. With the creation of each StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 21

More than 30 parts are 3-D printed and assembled for each prosthesis. Around 2,000 people in 45 countries have received free custom-designed limbs.

an example, she referred to Karissa’s Frozen-themed hand.

“We put snowflakes on her forearm, her name and the Elsa crown on the cuff, and attached an Olaf LED-holder to the palm. Then we 3-D printed the prosthesis.”

For Marnes, the hardest part is “choosing a design that will work best. We assemble over 30 parts, using screws, string, and even 3-D printed pins. We always produce a prototype that will allow us to ensure the design will work for the recipient. We print out the new customized parts and assemble them to get the final FROM DESIGN TO A CUSTOM product.”

PROSTHESIS Then comes a waiting period. “Although When Kristin Ludwicki, now president, a prosthesis can be printed in about 35 joined the club, she brought more experhours and assembled in about two hours,” tise. “Ever since I was a sophomore in high she notes, “the complete process can take school,” she recalls, “I have been interested several months.” That’s because students in prosthetics to advance and improve have classes to attend, other projects to health care. When I decided to attend Siena, complete, and additional demands on their e-NABLE caught my interest because it would allow me to start working on projects time.

I was extremely eager about. I believe prosThe most rewarding part of the process comes when students deliver the hand or thetics have so much room for improvearm to the recipient, says Marnes. A memoment, and I’m excited about using modern rable moment occurred for Marnes when technology to enable even more people.”

Jack, a 5-year-old in Ohio, got his prosMaking a new hand or arm for a child When students first meet with a recipient, involves several steps and many hours thetic hand. “I was completely shocked,” it’s called a “fist-bump meet-up.” she recalls. “It all became so real at that of work. “To start creating an e-NABLE moment. I was amazed that our work would soon be changprosthesis,” Ludwicki explains, “we ask the recipient to send ing this little boy’s life.” a picture of his or her arm next to a ruler. We then use a Not every project turns out perfectly, the students admit. program called Tracker to scale the length of the recipient’s “We once had a recipient with a unique case who did not like arm with respect to the ruler. We then scale all the individual parts of an arm to fit the recipient and upload the files to our plan for her,” says Ludwicki. “It was challenging for us to explain to her the limits of e-NABLE’s technology.” print.”

Sometimes, issues with the 3-D printer arise. In such Software like Solidworks and Tinkercad is used to cuscases, “We would simply make changes and print again until tomize the hand/arm files for the recipient, says Gleason. As she recalls, and training newcomers proved to be stressful.

But Gleason had a simple cure for all of her concerns.

“Whenever I was overwhelmed,” she says, “I would watch a video of a new recipient and see the look on their face. It reminded me that I could make a difference in someone’s life. To give a little kid more confidence and see their face light up is just the best thing. You don’t fully understand the feeling until you deliver a prosthesis to a recipient.”

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Students use engineering software to design custom hands and arms.

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the issue was resolved,” says Marnes.

“These challenges can be frustrating, but they allow us to use our problemsolving skills and learn new things from each situation.”

One challenge she and the other students are working on is the elbow. Says Ludwicki, “Since the e-NABLE devices are limited to people who have a working elbow, we’re working right now to design an electronic arm that works off bicep muscles in the hope of diversifying prosthetic designs for the future.”

Colleen Sullivan smiles glowingly, admiring her new prosthetic arm.

Kristin Ludwicki, head of the e-NABLE team, helps Colleen Sullivan adjust her new prosthetic arm, which was fashioned after Colleen’s heroine—Joan of Arc.

24 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

For Gleason, the best part of her e-NABLE experience was feeling “such a connection to the families.” Karissa came to Siena to attend a soccer game and was made an honorary member of the team. “She got to run out with the starters before the game,” Gleason remembers. “She is such a lively girl, and her smile is infectious. Her mom said that we were role models to her, and that was a great feeling.”

Says Ludwicki: “I always enjoy the process of making new prostheses because each one is unique for each recipient. It’s exciting to think outside the box and see the finished product.

The most rewarding part is the delivery of the device to a recipient because their expressions are usually priceless and proof that all the hard work was worth it.”

After graduation, she plans to work on projects “related to enhancing health care. I would love working with teams to brainstorm on the next groundbreaking idea and take part in the process to actually make it happen.

The e-NABLE team works together and is part of the reason why my goals are what they are—to be creative, yet think critically.”

Ludwicki adds that her Christian faith “definitely played a role in my eagerness to go into this field and my passion for e-NABLE. I love doing things that could make a difference in the world, and I think that is rooted in my faith. I genuinely feel that God led me to this field of study for a reason.”

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SIENA COLLEGE

A PERFECT FIT WITH FRANCISCAN VALUES

For Gleason, delivering working prostheses to children has made a lasting impact. “I have never felt as happy as I did in those moments. The emotion that comes over you is amazing—excitement and nervousness, relief because [the device] fits.

“I’m so grateful to Siena because of e-NABLE. It fits in

perfectly with its Franciscan values, and it will always be some of my best memories of my time at Siena.”

James Breig is a freelance author from East Greenbush, New York. He has written articles for many Catholic publications, including US Catholic, The Tablet, and this magazine.

Brother Coughlin (left) is inspired by the life-changing work of the e-NABLE team. Here he celebrates with new prosthetic recipient Colleen Sullivan.

Learning and Service through e-NABLE Franciscan Brother F. Edward Coughlin, president of Siena College, has a prototype of a prosthetic limb in his office to remind him of the college’s contribution to children around the globe through the e-NABLE program.

“I first learned that they made a hand for a boy who wanted to play baseball,” he recalls. “They also made a hand for a girl in Africa and redid it when it wasn’t perfect. She captured everyone’s imagination because of her infectious smile. She was so thrilled and went around shaking hands with her friends.”

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SIENA COLLEGE

With such stories filtering back to him, Brother Coughlin says that e-NABLE obviously brings “utter joy” to children. “The technological skill and printer to make the hand,” he continues, offer “incredible service to an individual and left an impact on me.”

The mission of e-NABLE to “give the world a helping hand” dovetails with Siena’s Catholic, Franciscan tradition. “We emulate this mission by reaching out to our surrounding community in the same fashion,” according to e-NABLE Siena’s website. “As part of the Siena College Franciscan community, we work together in friendship and respect; service to the poor and marginalized; and commitment to building a world that is more just and humane.”

To learn more about Siena’s e-NABLE program, visit enable.siena.edu. You can also view a video of Veronica, a girl in Uganda who received a prosthetic hand from the team, at e-NABLE’s website: http://EnablingtheFuture.org.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 25

parenting

com assionate Faced with the demands of parenting, this couple finds the gentle advice of Jean Vanier transformative.

By Shannon Evans

26 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

And that is exactly where I was the night my husband discovered a man named Jean Vanier in a mediocrequality YouTube video.

STRENGTH THROUGH COMPASSION

I walked into my husband’s home office after another tumultuous bedtime routine, my stomach swollen round with the growth of new life, to find him watching a video interview on his computer screen. Tears were running down his face.

“Watch this,” he urged as he ran it back to the beginning, for what I later would learn was the fourth time. I squinted as the bright screen invaded the dark room, and I listened to the founder of L’Arche talk about weakness.

Our only familiarity with L’Arche at the time was through the writings of Henri Nouwen, who was a priest in residence at a Toronto community for the disabled and those who care for them. We had never even heard the name of its founder, Jean Vanier, the man responsible for 147 such communities in 35 countries on five continents.

We sat in silence, mesmerized, as the aged man on the screen spoke of weakness as though it were a good thing—as though it were, in fact, the most precious gift we could offer another person and the key to profoundly gratifying relationships. The weakest among us—children, the needy—invite us to truly enter into the human experience through emotional honesty and the blessing of our own limitations. He wasn’t speaking of parenting,

OPPOSITE PAGE: The author found parenting to be an eye-opening experience, and not always in a good way. Then came a breakthrough from an unlikely source.

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

was going to be the best mother. I would blow everyone away with my mothering skills—most of all my husband, who, amid his longing for fatherhood, carried the ominous expectation that it would be the weight to finally completely cripple him with anxiety. Luckily, I knew my motherhood would render parenting our first child a breeze. He’d be ready for six more in no time.

I rounded the corner of my final lap toward family life sure of two things: 1) Parents should be in control at all times, and 2) Children should never be allowed to emotionally manipulate their parents. Bolstered by a stack of books penned by some prolific Christian authors, I was convinced that this two-part theory (with enough nurture thrown in) would guarantee a happy home life.

But when motherhood finally met me at dusk in a little Ugandan orphanage, I furrowed my brow and curved down my mouth at how my expectations failed to fall in line. I had a degree in family studies, for crying out loud.

What were these inadequacies and failures doing, showing up in the one area I was supposed to be good at?

We finalized the adoption, and, despite all the parenting advice I’d taken in, I couldn’t control my son. A year went by, then another, and another. We loved each other deeply, but the Beatles were wrong—love wasn’t all we needed. I felt hopeless and defeated; he felt cornered and scared. I didn’t know how to get through to him, and he didn’t know how to trust me. We were at a stalemate: a very emotional, angry, brokenhearted draw.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE EVANS FAMILY/KATHRYN KRUEGER

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PHOTO CREDIT HERE

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 27

First-time parents Shannon and Eric Evans delighted in their new son but struggled with issues of parental control. When they recognized their shared humanity with their child, they discovered a source of mutual respect and understanding.

And in doing so, he modeled the way for us to commune with one another through understanding, gentleness, and hospitality of the heart.

In his book Becoming Human, Vanier explains communion like this: “Communion is at the heart of the mystery of our humanity. It means accepting the presence of another inside oneself, as well as accepting the reciprocal call to enter into another. Communion, which implies the security and insecurity of trust, is a constant struggle against all the powers of fear and selfishness in us, as well as the seemingly resilient human need to control another person.

To a certain extent, we lose control in our own lives when we are open to others. . . . Communion makes us vulnerable.”

Being a good parent was never meant to be about control; it was meant to be about communion.

Through Jean Vanier’s lens, I saw that motherhood was a calling to share COMMUNION, NOT CONTROL vulnerability with my child, to open As my husband and I quickly became myself up, even through my own Vanierites (if there is such a thing), imperfections and shortcomings, to acquiring nearly every written work Shannon and Eric Evans are surrounded by their make an emotional connection with a the man had penned, I found myself children, (from left) Oscar, Taavi, Alyosha, and Moses. human being I loved dearly. I couldn’t falling down a rabbit hole of tenderwill him to obey and I didn’t want to harshly discipline ness. Weakness, I was finally given permission to believe, was not something to avoid or repress. Weakness was the thread him into terrified compliance. Our only hope was a shared weakness, one where I made space for his needs and he felt of humanity, vulnerability the very thing able to bind us safe through my humility. Once we learned this new way to together. dance, things slowly—yes, sometimes too slowly—began to I became enamored with the fact that an infinite God turn around. deigned to become a human being, in all our smallness and I happily let go of the picture in my head of the fully comlimitations, to fully unite himself to the human experience.

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JEAN VANIER: COURTESY OF KOTUKARAN/GABRIEL SOZZI

necessarily, but rather of simply being in the world. But we heard him loud and clear.

This man, I thought, reminds me so much of Jesus. To hear him speak was like listening to the Gospels come to life; he simply radiated the love and gentleness of Christ.

I was reminded of what Philippians 2:6–7 says of Jesus Christ: “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself . . . coming in human likeness.”

If Our Lord himself determined that power was not to be grasped, what was I doing grasping for it? If my highest goal as a parent was to model the ways of God for my child, it seemed undeniable that God was calling me to come to my son in human likeness. To come in shared humanity. To exercise compassion, which literally means “to suffer with.”

petent, expert mother whom I had thought I needed to be. I started saying yes more and no less. I spent more time sitting beside my son and less time instituting time-outs that rejected him from my physical space. I began compassionately pulling us out of social events that he couldn’t handle instead of insisting he do things that made his anxiety skyrocket. I started seeing things through his eyes rather than my own, and he started to trust that I would.

JEAN VANIER: COURTESY OF KOTUKARAN/GABRIEL SOZZI

FINDING TRUE NORTH

Did I ever revert to grasping to control my boy? Of course I did. I still do, with all four of my children. But now I know how to find the N on the compass. When I stumble, I can get myself back on the track of compassionately guiding them through life because now I know how to find Jesus’ leadership in parenting. Thanks to Jean Vanier, I am no longer scared of my own inadequacies, but rather I am able to feel solidarity with all other human beings because of them.

I have found that my son’s weakness and my own weakness are really not so different at all: They are the very parts of us that make room for one another in our hearts. And when we turn our shared weakness into communion, we experience the incarnated Christ himself.

Shannon Evans is an author residing in Denton, Texas, whose work has appeared in America magazine, the Huffington Post, and other print and online publications. You can learn more about her and her writing at ShannonKEvans.com.

WHO IS JEAN VANIER? Jean Vanier is best known as the founder of the international L’Arche communities, where those with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together.

After an early career in the Royal Canadian Navy, Vanier felt a pull toward a more spiritual life and became interested in people with intellectual disabilities. After meeting two patients in a Paris psychiatric hospital, he bought a small house and invited them to live with him.

His determination to do something for these two men deepened into a desire to share life with them, to move from helper to friend.

Together, the three forged a new way of life.

L’Arche was born.

The author of dozens of books, Vanier won the Templeton Prize in 2015. He gave the entire award (about $1.7 million) to L’Arche and Faith and Light, a network of communities whose members—people with and without intellectual disabilities—do not live together but instead meet regularly for fellowship.

Now nearing his 90th birthday and recently sidelined by heart trouble, Jean Vanier remains an advocate. In his January 2018 newsletter, “A Letter from Jean” (jean-vanier.org), he wrote, “Each day is a new day to know God better, to love Jesus better, and to work for the kingdom of God and for peace in our poor world.”

—Sandy Howison StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 29

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POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH

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By Kyle Kramer

The Wisdom of Women

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Kyle is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion.

He serves as a Catholic climate ambassador for the US Conference of Catholic Bishopssponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt (Ave Maria Press, 2010).

He speaks across the country on issues of ecology and spirituality.

He and his family spent 15 years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana.

EarthandSpiritCenter.org

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Kyle Kramer

omen are a mystery to me. Even after 16 years of marriage, I understand my wife, Cyndi, only a fraction as well as she wishes I did. I’m beginning to understand our twin daughters less and less, not only because they are teenagers, but also because they are becoming young women in their own right.

I’m learning that women often have ways of perceiving, processing, and engaging the world that are completely unlike my own.

Cyndi is always the first reader of this column, for example, and she usually offers a perspective on it that never occurred to me and that completely changes my direction—often for the better. In fact, my first draft of this very column landed on the scrap heap after she was done with it. “are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

Now in the second half of my life, I’m It will take me the rest of my life to learn beginning to soften up enough to really what I need to from the wisdom of women. I appreciate different ways of moving through pray that my teachers are patient! the world that most women tend to embody more than most men. I see the damage I’ve HELPFUL done to myself and others by being overly Celebrating the rational, driven, and individualistic—and, frankly, the many things I’ve missed out on.

Feminine Influence I see similar damage writ large in our systems of government, business, and education. I see Reread the biblical stories about it most of all in how poorly we treat God’s strong women such as Esther, creation, our mother Earth.

Rachel, Ruth, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene, and, of course, Mary the mother of Jesus.

Honestly, I hope the cultural pendulum What qualities do you admire in them? swings substantially in the other direction for a time. It may take exactly that to right the Many families have a matriarch. If yours many wrongs that male-dominated cultures does, spend time with her and ask her to have wrought over the past few millennia. share her stories and wisdom. If you are that What I hope for eventually, however, is that as matriarch, hold court! individuals and entire cultures, we might find ways to integrate the best of both feminine The next time you say the rosary, dwell and masculine qualities. It is essential for our on the powerful womanly qualities that very survival. prayer brings forward. Mary is a model for As I read the Gospels, I realize that Jesus us all! lived out of this kind of integration—due, in no small part, to the influence of his Holy Mother and the other phenomenal women who were faithful to him in his life and at his death. Even hardheaded Peter and firebreathing Saul came around eventually as they proclaimed the good news to the Jews and gentiles; Paul even went so far as to break down gender divisions in claiming that we

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LEFT: CHERYL DEBONO/MICHAELANGELOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM; RIGHT: COURTESY OF MAMICH FAMILY ARCHIVES

Once mere acquaintances as pastor and parishioner, Father Mamich (left) and Jim Lechko (right) now share a special bond after Lechko donated his kidney to the priest in April 2014.

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

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ALLTHE FAMILY AN ORGAN DONOR STORY

Father Mamich’s kidney condition was worsening and he wasn’t sure where to turn next. The answer, as it turns out, was in the pews all along.

By Jerri Donohue

LEFT: CHERYL DEBONO/MICHAELANGELOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM; RIGHT: COURTESY OF MAMICH FAMILY ARCHIVES

PHOTO CREDIT HERE

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Not long after, his kidneys created ather Joseph Mamich changed a flat other health problems. He began suffertire in the gray winter light. It was ing from gout in 2012. For a while, his 5:40 in the morning, and the priest was lungs retained fluid. After doctors preon his way to dialysis, a routine he’d kept scribed prednisone, he gained weight and for weeks. woke up for several hours each night.

“I’d have dialysis in the morning and In February 2013, he scratched his be back in the office by 11:30,” Father leg in the ocean while vacationing. Back Mamich says. The pastor of St. Joseph home, doctors treated the ensuing infecparish in Strongsville, Ohio, he sheption with antibiotics during a two-day herded a flock of 2,593 families assisted hospital stay. by three other priests; one was on tempo“It came roaring back a week later,” rary assignment. Father Mamich persethe priest recalls. Nauseated, feverish, and vered in hearing confessions and other experiencing rocketing blood pressure, From early on, Joseph Mamich, pictured here at priestly duties, even scheduling funerals he spent another week in the hospital around his treatments.

16, struggled with impaired kidney function. with a staph infection. Doctors finally “I’m not sure how I did that,” Father opted for emergency surgery to debride the tissue around his Mamich admits today. “I don’t think I ever knew how sick I knee. was.”

Then, on Palm Sunday 2013, the priest felt light-headed Years earlier, Pope John Paul II listed voluntary organ at the conclusion of Mass. He made his way to a chair in donation among the acts of “everyday heroism” that build a the sanctuary, sat down, and promptly passed out. “It was culture of life. Father Mamich’s everyday hero lived among actually a pretty graceful experience,” Father Mamich says. “A his own parishioners.

6-foot guy coming down on the [marble] floor would have been bad.”

AN ONGOING PROBLEM Although he dismisses it as “not that dramatic,” news of When he was a first grader, doctors had diagnosed the future the incident spread throughout his parish. People openly priest with pediatric nephritis, inflammation of the kidneys.

They predicted he would outgrow it. When he was a junior at expressed concern for their pastor’s health. “One particular person had me dead and buried,” Father Mamich says.

Padua Franciscan High School, however, a biopsy indicated that he had Berger’s disease, a condition that impairs kidney HELP WITHIN THE PARISH FAMILY function. Doctors warned their young patient that he could The pastor decided to curtail rumors by explaining the situneed dialysis, a transplant, or treatment with prednisone by ation to his parishioners. In a letter tucked into the weekly the time he was 30 or 40 years old.

Life went on. After high school, Mamich entered the semi- bulletin, he informed them of his history of kidney disease, and he asked for their prayers. nary. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland He offered an update two months later. “For whatever in 2006 and served as parochial vicar in two parishes before reason, the progression of the disease has sped up and has becoming pastor of St. Joseph in 2011.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 33

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COURTESY OF MAMICH FAMILY ARCHIVES

COURTESY OF CLEVELAND CLINIC, CLEVELAND, OHIO

Surgeons and nurses at the Cleveland Clinic perform an organ transplant operation. Organ donation is a lifesaving and selfless act that is in accordance with the Catholic Church’s pro-life ethics.

COURTESY OF MAMICH FAMILY ARCHIVES

COURTESY OF CLEVELAND CLINIC, CLEVELAND, OHIO

NO DOUBTS come to three possibilities,” he wrote. “Transplant, dialysis, Lechko agreed to report to the Cleveland Clinic for a psychoor a miracle.” logical evaluation and two days of extensive medical tests to Meanwhile, the Kidney Transplant Program at the ensure he was healthy enough to be a donor. He also conCleveland Clinic accepted Father Mamich as a potential firmed that he had his wife’s full support. “I didn’t want to organ recipient. He was an only child, and his parents were get Father Joe’s hopes up and then at some point say, ‘I can’t ineligible because of age; he would not find a donor within do it,’” he remembers. his family. He expected to wait for as long as six years for a Sue Lechko worried about putting Jim’s healthy body kidney from a deceased donor.

When people heard about this development, several asked through unnecessary surgery. But her husband told her the words of John 15:13 kept running through his mind: “No how they might become a living donor for him. At Mass one one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s Sunday, the priest stressed that he was not asking anyone to friends.” His rock-solid faith in the outcome also soothed her volunteer, but interested individuals could call the Cleveland fears.

Clinic’s Kidney Donor Program.

“I never In the pews, doubted the deciJim Lechko shot sion,” Jim says. “I his wife a sidelong never got nervous glance. “I could about doing it just feel the wheels [the transplant]. I turning in his just felt like I was head,” Sue Lechko called to do it.” now says of the Soon after he man she married scheduled the 42 years earlier. medical tests, For two weeks, Lechko saw Father Lechko did not Mamich at the discuss the idea parish picnic and with his wife. But informed him. the impulse to Because of convolunteer to be a fidentiality rules, donor returned Father Mamich (left) and Jim Lechko (right) were all smiles on April 28, 2014—the day of the kidney transthe priest did not again and again. know the name He knew the plant surgery. Ever grateful for Lechko’s gift, the priest considers this date “another Thanksgiving Day.” of any potential importance of donor until then. He was acquainted with Lechko, who parorgan donation. His high school football coach had received ticipated in several parish organizations, and they sometimes a kidney from another coach years earlier. “It’s really somechatted in the sacristy when Lechko served as lector. But they thing I believe in,” Lechko says. “I’ve been signed up to be an were not close friends. organ donor since I was 16 years old when I got my driver’s The priest introduced Lechko to his parents but told license.” nobody else because Lechko wished to remain anonymous.

At dinner one night, Lechko told Sue he wanted to be He didn’t want his decision to be tainted by a need for recogtested as a possible donor for Father Mamich. “There are nition. “In my daily prayers, I would pray that I was doing it thousands of people just in our country who need organ for the right reason,” Lechko says. donations,” Lechko told her. “Their own family members During his subsequent psychological evaluation at the aren’t even matches a lot of the time. What is the likelihood that I’m going to be a match? I just want to go and be tested.” Cleveland Clinic, Lechko was asked how he would feel if Father Mamich’s body rejected the donated kidney. “If God Still in his 50s, Lechko wasn’t too old to be a donor, and wants this to happen, it’s going to happen,” he replied. “If it is so Father Mamich’s transplant coordinator scheduled him rejected, life goes on. I did what I could do.” for the first step, a blood draw. Lechko was working on an At the clinic, Lechko also learned that he would not be old convent in Cincinnati with his parish’s Mission of Hope responsible for any medical or hospital bills. “Everything was when she called him with the results. handled through Father Joe’s insurance company,” he says.

“Not perfect, but still a match,” Lechko says. As it happened, his O-negative blood type made him a suitable donor FAITH, PRAYER, PERSEVERANCE for patients with other blood types. He has donated more A week after the tests, Father Mamich’s transplant coordinathan 17 gallons of blood over the years. tor called Lechko with the news that his blood pressure and “I go every eight weeks because I know it’s so rare,” he cholesterol level were too high for surgery. She advised him says.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 35

The Popes on Organ Donation “A person may will to dispose of his body and to destine it to ends that are useful, morally irreproachable, and even noble, among them the desire to aid the sick and suffering.”

—Pope Pius XII in an address to eye specialists, May 14, 1956

—Pope Benedict XVI on November 7, 2008, to the Pontifical Academy for Life’s International Congress on Organ Donation

In an October 2014 meeting with the Transplant Committee for the Council of Europe, Pope Francis described organ donation as “a testimony of love for our neighbor.”

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COURTESY OF PADUA FRANCISCAN HIGH SCHOOL/MEDTRACK

“The act of love which is expressed with the gift of one’s own vital organs is a genuine testament of charity that knows how to look beyond death so that life always wins.”

to see his primary care physician to correct these problems and then return in three months.

Lechko’s doctor recommended a Mediterranean diet and aerobic exercise. “So I ate a whole bunch of food I typically wouldn’t be eating,” Lechko recalls. “Lowfat breads, a lot of tuna and nuts, dates, raisins, oatmeal, turkey. I started running again.” Before long, he was running five miles, five days a week.

“I went back to the doctor two and a half months later,” Lechko says. “I actually lost 27 pounds. My blood pressure came down. My cholesterol level came down.”

He was cleared for the transplant.

Meanwhile, a side effect of one of Father Mamich’s medicines had caused bone deterioration. “I ended up having to have my hip replaced because of the prednisone,” Father Mamich says.

Lechko maintained his good health while waiting for Father Mamich to recover.

He resisted the culinary temptations of the holidays, and he ran at 5:00 every morning. Whenever snow piled up, he jogged in the plowed streets.

The transplant finally was set for March 10, 2014. The parish planned an intercessory Mass for that evening. In the meantime, the priest’s kidney function worsened. He began dialysis. The surgery was postponed when doctors found fluid around his heart, and so both Father Mamich and his kidney donor attended their special Mass.

“It was a packed house,” Lechko says. “The prayers were palpable.”

In his homily, Father Mamich mentioned the inconvenient “flat tire” earlier that day. He emphasized the necessity of faith, prayer, and perseverance. When he introduced Lechko as his donor, the faithful prayed for both men by name.

A cardiologist had predicted Father Mamich’s heart condition would not clear up before June, but the fluid inexplicably disappeared within two and a half weeks.

The transplant was rescheduled for April 28, 2014. Pastor and parishioner rode to the surgery center together. Neither felt apprehensive. When the two awoke hours later, each learned that the other was well, and that the transplanted kidney was functioning.

Within a couple of days, Lechko’s wife maneuvered him in a wheelchair to visit Father Mamich in another hospital wing. The priest already felt remarkably better.

“I wanted out of that bed!” Father Mamich recalls. “I wanted to get going.”

CHERYL DEBONO/MICHAELANGELOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

—St. John Paul II, address to the first International Congress of the Society for Organ Sharing, June 20, 1991

“KDY2JM” refers to Jim Lechko’s kidney donation to “JM”—Father Joseph Mamich (right).

POPE PIUS XII: WIKIPEDIA; ST. JOHN PAUL II: CNS PHOTO/REUTERS; POPE BENEDICT XVI: WIKIPEDIA/KANCELARIA PREZYDENTA RP; POPE FRANCIS: CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING

“Every organ transplant has its source in a decision of great ethical value: the decision to offer without reward a part of one’s own body for the health and well-being of another person.”

The Church and Organ Donation The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that 115,000 Americans currently await transplants of hearts, lungs, or other organs. Of these, 95,344 suffer from failing kidneys.

Padua Franciscan High School students in the MedTrack program take four years of advanced science courses, meet health-care professionals, and even get to observe organ transplant operations.

Lechko returned to work after four weeks, but Father Mamich had to avoid crowds for three months. “After the transplant, you feel great,” the priest says. “You want to get out and do things, but you have to be careful how you interact with others so you don’t catch something.”

In time, doctors permitted him to leave his parents’ home and return to the rectory, where he met with parish staff. He was elated when more than 400 people came to the Mass of thanksgiving he eventually celebrated.

The Church condemns the sale or trafficking of organs. In keeping with its teaching that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, it presents these guidelines for voluntary organ donation: • The benefit obtained by the organ recipient must be proportionate to the risk undertaken by a living donor.

Father Mamich and Jim Lechko still nurture the friendship that blossomed during the transplant process. They occasionally go out to dinner or meet for breakfast.

Father Mamich prays for Lechko every day, and when the Lechkos celebrated a milestone wedding anniversary, he attended their party.

Lechko experiences no residual effects of donating a kidney. “But Father Joe complains that he sweats all the time now,” Lechko says, laughing. “And I’m a heavy sweater. I don’t know if that came across with the kidney or not.” The priest remains careful with his health because he’s grateful for the gift he received from Lechko. “There is such a thing as a ‘transversary,’” he says. “But I just look at it [April 28] as another Thanksgiving Day. Every day, I’m thankful.”

Together, the two men work to raise awareness of the need for organ donation, which “fits into a consistent ethic of life. It fits nicely in the Church’s teaching on life,” Father Mamich says. “There are things we do and things we don’t do.

It’s good to know both those things.” After their presentation to a Rotary group, Lechko met with an audience member who was considering organ donation. He was pleased when the young man later became an anonymous kidney donor.

Each spring, the two men address Padua Franciscan High School students in its MedTrack program, which includes four years of advanced science courses with a Franciscan approach to health care. “When I start my talks to the kids, I always say that God gave me the opportunity to do something really significant with my life,” Lechko says. “I said yes, and because of that we have a healthy Father Joe.” “It sounds cliché, but you never know what one decision can do for someone else,” Father Mamich says. “One decision—be it an action, be it words, be it thoughts—we don’t really know what it will do.” The priest, who was only 34 at the time of the transplant, says no donated organ functions forever. If tomorrow his life should end suddenly, he would still be grateful for the transplant.

“A lot of great things have happened these last four years that would not have happened if Jim had not stepped forward,” Father Mamich says.

Based in Brecksville, Ohio, Jerri Donohue writes for a variety of religious and secular publications. This is her fifth article for St. Anthony Messenger.

• The donor must understand the risks involved and freely accept them.

• The donor must be able to continue living a healthy life after the transplant.

For example, Jim Lechko enjoys good health with a single kidney.

In the case of deceased donors, the Church insists that: • The donor must freely consent to organ donation prior to his/her death. Many people signal their intention through a notation on their driver’s license. While he was still a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI carried an organ donor’s card.

COURTESY OF CLEVELAND CLINIC, CLEVELAND, OHIO

COURTESY OF PADUA FRANCISCAN HIGH SCHOOL/MEDTRACK

CHERYL DEBONO/MICHAELANGELOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

RAISING AWARENESS

• Upon a donor’s death, his/her next of kin may choose to donate the deceased relative’s organs.

• A donor must be verifiably dead—no organs may be removed until death has occurred, i.e., organs may not be taken from persons in a permanent vegetative state.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 37

By Patricia Montemurri 38 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

JERRYB9/FOTOSEARCH

A Catholic agency helps resettle families from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq, helping their dreams of a better future become a reality.

CNS PHOTO/COURTESY OF THE FRANCISCAN GENERALATE

FINDING SAFE HAVEN IN

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CNS PHOTO/COURTESY OF THE FRANCISCAN GENERALATE

JERRYB9/FOTOSEARCH

n war-ravaged Syria, Abdulrahman Mohammed and his family would go for months at a time without bread or running water. “We and our neighbors were constantly under attack from mortars and snipers,” he recalls.

Miles away in neighboring Iraq, ISIS militants swept through Mosul and nearby towns, destroying homes and churches. The violence forced Sameera, an Iraqi Catholic widow, and her family to flee. Their home and church would be destroyed.

Today, Abdulrahman and Sameera and their families are starting over in the suburbs of Detroit.

Father Michael Perry, minister general of the Franciscan Order, walks past the rubble of a bombed-out building in Aleppo, Syria. He visited Franciscans living and working in the war-torn region in April 2017.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 39

SYRIA

FAMILY FROM

The Mohammeds are rebuilding their lives in Detroit. They were among the “lucky few” to resettle in the United States after escaping the violence in Syria.

WELCOMING ‘THE LUCKY FEW’

Abdulrahman’s and Sameera’s families were among the last refugees resettled by CCSEM during the spring and summer of 2017. “[They] were the lucky few,” says Farrah Shammas, CCSEM’s program manager until she was laid off because of the agency shutdown.

Detroit has long been a destination for immigrants from the Middle East, who were attracted to the birthplace of the American auto industry. According to 2015 US Census data, some 2 percent of Michigan residents report Arab ancestry, the highest in the country.

40 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

For refugees, the CCSEM staff was “basically here as their best friend, if they come in and have nobody here,” says Shammas. “We help them find language programs. We help them enroll their kids in school. We help them get their public assistance that they need.”

CCSEM provides 90 days of services to each refugee family. “We look for furniture donations, household items, clothing to get them by until all their public assistance comes through,” says Shammas. “They have multiple health screening appointments, and they are required to be assessed and vaccinated. We help them get their Social Security cards and all the necessary documents that they need.”

AMID BOMBINGS, ‘IT WAS TIME’

Now living in the suburbs of Detroit, Abdulrahman Mohammed and his wife, Zahrahaj, consider themselves fortunate despite the violence and trauma that forced them from their home country. The family escaped from Aleppo, the Syrian city at the epicenter of the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian civil war, in 2013.

“We are lucky we got here,” says Zahrahaj, whose family is Muslim and of Kurdish descent. The family and their children spent four years in a refugee camp in Turkey before arriving in Detroit on March 27, 2017.

The Mohammed family described what they lived through and why they decided to flee Aleppo.

Zahrahaj says her first cousin saw her three children die as they played in the street when a bomb fell from the sky.

Zahrahaj’s daughter Yildiz had filled out paperwork to attend

COURTESY OF CCSEM

The families are among 1,100 refugees—most of them from Syria and Iraq—who were resettled in the Detroit area from October 2015 through September 2017 with the assistance of Catholic Charities of Southeastern Michigan (CCSEM).

However, after a record-setting year—the agency resettled 813 refugees in 2016—CCSEM is contending with a virtual shutdown as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, which sharply reduced the flow of refugees.

“We’re a program in hibernation right now,” says David Bartek, executive director of CCSEM, which operates under the Archdiocese of Detroit. “We no longer have any staff [assigned to] refugee resettlement.”

In the current fiscal year, which began October 1, 2017, and ends September 30, 2018, “we will have resettled five refugees,” says Bartek. “That’s five—one, two, three, four, five.”

the university in Aleppo and left just 10 minutes before bombings on campus left more than 80 people dead, including some of her friends, on January 15, 2013. That’s when Abdulrahman, 47, who supported the family as a taxi driver, decided to make plans to leave.

“It was time. We were subject to bombings, kidnapping, rape. The kids understood that it was for a better future,” he says. From Aleppo, they went to a village where relatives lived. One night, guided by a full moon, they walked three hours through woods from the village to the border with Turkey. Now the children laugh when they recall that, during the escape, they encountered a hissing snake rising from the forest floor. Abdulrahman carried his disabled daughter on his back.

They express no bitterness, despite the four-year ordeal of living as refugees in Turkey. The family rented an apartment in Istanbul. Abdulrahman worked as a laborer unloading trucks. He also cut material by hand and machined it in a small shop. Daughter Yildiz worked with her dad at the shop, but once she picked up the Turkish language, she also worked at a clothing store. They didn’t have money to pay for all the children to go to a school where they could learn in the Arabic language to which they were accustomed instead of Turkish.

The family’s struggle was also amplified when the couple’s disabled 15-year-old daughter died. On a cell phone, Zahrahaj brings up her photo. “Her name was Golestan. She died in Turkey.”

DOUGHNUTS AND GRAPE LEAVES

In Detroit now, smiles and laughter punctuate the conversation, despite memories of deprivation, fear, and tragedy.

Last summer, the parents went to school three hours every weekday to learn English. Yildiz learned some English while in Turkey. She plans to attend community college. In the meantime, she rises early every morning for a 3:30 a.m. shift making doughnuts at a nearby Tim Hortons drive-through.

They had no relatives or connections here. But the neighbor next door, who flies an American flag outside, brought them a cake in welcome. Zahrahaj reciprocated with a plate of grape leaves.

“All the neighbors raise their hands to say hello,” says Abdulrahman. He sought work as a chauffeur or taxi driver and hopes someday to open his own business, such as a usedcar lot. Within days of landing in Detroit, the three youngest children—Amina, 14, Mohammad, 12, and Ahmed, 10— were enrolled in local schools. Their oldest daughter, Dunya, married while in Turkey and is now living with her husband in Germany.

“At first, school was tough,” recalls Amina, who says she wants to be a police detective. “I got used to it. It was better than not going to school in Turkey. Here, life is better.”

Mohammad points in the direction of a street just blocks away, noting in English, “I have friends. We play PlayStation.”

He’d like to be a biologist.

When the youngest child, Ahmed, is dropped off from an English-language class, he walks into the living room and

IRAQ

COURTESY OF CCSEM

COURTESY OF CCSEM

FAMILY FROM Iraqi Catholics, Sameera’s family fled after ISIS occupied their village. They resettled in Detroit after three years living as refugees in Turkey.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 41

STEVANOVICIGOR/FOTOSEARCH

HOPE

shakes the hands of the jourChristianity. After Mosul fell, nalist and social worker.

Sameera, her three children, A refugee “is someone who has been “What’s the word of the and others in her family fled forced to flee his or her country beday?” his dad asks him in Qaraqosh, home to one of cause of persecution, war, or violence,” Arabic. Ahmed juts a finger the largest Catholic commuaccording to the United Nations. “A upward and responds, “Sky.” nities in Iraq. refugee has a well-founded fear of And he throws in “cloud” Qaraqosh fell under persecution for reasons of race, religion, for atmospheric amplificaISIS control, and the home nationality, political opinion, or membertion. Ahmed’s thinking of where Sameera lived and the becoming a pilot, impressed Chaldean Catholic churches ship in a particular social group.” as he was with the airplane where she worshipped were ride that brought him to the destroyed. There’s a fledgUnited States. ling effort under way to rebuild these historic Christian “My kids have big dreams. They’re all different,” says communities, since Iraqi and US forces drove the Islamic Abdulrahman. But they cannot imagine going back to their State group out of the region in fall 2016. The Knights of previous lives.

Columbus, for example, has announced it will contribute $2 “Who would I go back to? I have no family back in Syria,” million to rebuild the Christian town of Karemles. says Abdulrahman. “There is nothing.”

But after spending three years as a refugee in Turkey while seeking resettlement to the Detroit area, Sameera cannot PRAYING FOR A BETTER FUTURE imagine a life in Iraq. Sameera, who asked that the family’s For Sameera, there is nothing to go back to in the northern last names not be used, arrived in Detroit with her three Iraqi city of Qaraqosh, where she grew up with 10 siblings, children, her mother, and a sister. married, gave birth to one son and two daughters, and burSameera’s mother, Zamira, raised 11 children, and is ied her husband. distraught that her youngest son, Samir, had to remain in The family members are Iraqi Catholics—known as Turkey to await approval as a refugee.

Chaldeans. After Islamic State forces conquered the Iraqi While in a town about three hours from Ankara, Turkey, city of Mosul in June 2014, the militants steadily vanquished the grandmother says family members were subject to hostilhistoric towns and villages where Catholics lived for hunity and disrespect. They couldn’t go to Mass because there dreds of years, descendants of some of the first followers of weren’t any Christian churches in their town. While they

42 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

applied for resettlement in the United States, Sameera and her sister Hiba found work in a school cafeteria. Her teenage son, Abdallah, got a job at a restaurant, while his sisters, Noor and Donia, stayed in their tiny apartment.

“We were afraid. We were scared. We had no control,” says Sameera. “We couldn’t stay in Turkey, and we couldn’t go back to Iraq. Work, home, work. The kids didn’t go to school for two to three years. We couldn’t pay for private school, and Christians were not welcome.”

“Our town is destroyed. They burned the houses to the ground. It’s like a desert,” Hiba says of the ISIS occupation of Qaraqosh. “Sameera’s home is destroyed. Our mother’s home was burned and the furniture is gone. The church where Sameera married, St. Jacob, is destroyed.”

Sameera asked to be resettled in Detroit, where an older sister, Rita, has lived for five years. When the family arrived in June 2017, Rita met them at the airport. In Sameera’s apartment in suburban Detroit, the family has hung three framed photos, including one of her late husband and another one of her late father.

In their first weeks in Detroit, they visited a lake, enjoyed a picnic lunch, and went swimming. “The first time in our lives we went to a big lake,” says Sameera. Abdallah tried Mexican food and enjoyed it. Within two months of arriving in Detroit, the family was celebrating some joyous news: Hiba became engaged to a Chaldean immigrant who worked with Rita.

“Inshallah,” says Sameera, which is Arabic for “God willing,” as she describes her hopes for stability and safety in Detroit and to be reunited with one of her younger brothers left behind in Turkey.

“We get by,” Sameera says with a glimmer of optimism.

“We hope. We pray for a good future.”

Patricia Montemurri is a freelance journalist who wrote for the Detroit Free Press for 36 years. She’s written about a wide range of subjects, including the Catholic Church, politics, women’s issues, and breaking news.

‘Unconscionable’

The Trump administration said it would accept 45,000 refugees for the fiscal year that ends on September 30. But William Canny, executive director of Migration and Refugee Services for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it’s likely only half that number will be admitted.

The federal government’s practices “have slowed refugee admissions to a trickle,” says Canny. The Trump administration contends that tougher vetting of refugees, immigrants, and visitors is necessary for national security.

Catholic Charities of Southeastern Michigan is among 90 Catholicaffiliated programs that help with refugee resettlement across the country, says Canny. “Many have downsized and about 20 have closed or are in limbo, and it’s not clear how many will continue into the future,” he says.

The impact on Michigan agencies is profound because many specialize in helping refugees from majority-Muslim countries targeted by Trump’s evolving travel bans and security advisory lists affecting refugees, immigrants, and travelers. “It’s primarily due to fewer arrivals of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Those are the largest nationality groups that have resettled in Michigan,” Canny says.

National Public Radio, for example, reported that the United States had accepted only 11 Syrian refugees through mid-April 2018, compared to 15,479 in 2016 and 3,024 in 2017. Canny and others are lobbying federal officials to bring in more refugees, with a target of at least 75,000 in fiscal year 2019.

“Many are stuck in refugee camps that are just horrible,” Canny says. “It’s really unconscionable for our country. Bringing in 75,000 refugees to a country this size isn’t a heavy lift, and many of us feel this is the least we can do. By not helping, we’re actually hurting ourselves. We’re weakening our own caritas, our own ability to love, our own enrichment from the diversity that refugees bring.”

STEVANOVICIGOR/FOTOSEARCH

EVOLUTION OF TRUMP’S TRAVEL BAN

JANUARY 2017 President Trump issues an executive order that bans admission to the United States of people from seven countries—Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—for 90 days. It bans entry to all refugees for 120 days and places an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria.

MARCH 2017 With the initial order blocked because of legal challenges, Trump issues a revised order that removes Iraq from the list of countries affected by the 90-day ban. The new order also removes the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.

JUNE 2017 After legal challenges, the US Supreme Court upholds parts of the ban, allowing it to be enforced for those who don’t have close relatives or ties to US institutions.

SEPTEMBER 2017 Trump signs an executive order calling for “enhanced vetting capabilities.” The third version of the travel ban now includes Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela.

DECEMBER 2017 The United States says it is lifting the ban on the 11 countries, but US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said refugees seeking to enter its territories would come under even more stringent scrutiny.

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 43

Seeing through

JESUS’ Eyes

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: LEFT: LUSHPIX; RIGHT: MARCONICOUTO

By Peter Wilcox

44 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Jesus calls us to open our eyes to his presence in our daily lives, creating a path to love of self and others.

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: LEFT: LUSHPIX; RIGHT: MARCONICOUTO

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n John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, there is a scene in which a son gives his father a present that he has selected with great care and for which he has sacrificed a great deal. The father spurns it. The reader understands that the father does this because he is an emotionally wounded person who has trouble believing that he himself deserves a special present. But the boy, lacking the reader’s perspective, cannot understand that. The message he gets is that he is not good enough, and this rejection will color the rest of his life.

In over 30 years as a psychotherapist and spiritual director, I have had the opportunity to work with people of all ages, struggling with a variety of issues. Often, they are people just like this boy, walking around feeling that they are not good enough, feeling disappointed in who they are, and not believing they deserve to be loved.

They are ordinary people who feel they don’t quite measure up in someone’s eyes, who feel that if they only tried a little harder, they could finally please someone and feel better about themselves. Then they might deserve to be loved. Most of the time, these people are sad, angry, and depressed, often not knowing anymore what to do with some dimension of their lives.

So often we feel we need to be perfect for other people to love us and that somehow we forfeit that love if we ever fall short of perfection. There are few emotions more capable of leaving us feeling bad about ourselves than the conviction that we don’t deserve to be loved. But God doesn’t stop loving us every time we

do something wrong, and neither should we stop loving ourselves and each other for being less than perfect.

Several years ago, the well-known author Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book entitled How Good Do We Have to Be? In this book, Rabbi Kushner emphasizes the fact that no one is perfect. Yet many people measure themselves and others against impossibly high standards.

But the result is always the same—guilt, anger, depression, and disappointment. A healthier approach, Rabbi Kushner maintains, is to learn how to put our human shortcomings into proper perspective. We need to learn how to accept ourselves and others even when we and they are less than perfect.

A former client told me one time that she had always worked hard at being good enough. For her, it was the gold standard by which she decided what to read, what to wear, how to act, and even what to say. Even good enough was not really good enough for her. She said she had spent a lifetime trying to make herself perfect. She had always feared that she would be found out. Now, she was emotionally exhausted and depressed. What she needed was to simply understand that she was human.

What a relief it must have been for people in the Gospels to experience the acceptance and love of Jesus.

Finally, here was someone who loved them even though they were not perfect. Finally, here was someone who was willing to meet and associate with them even though they were sinners. And even though they were common, ordinary people, here was a person who could make

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 45

Often, finding God in the events of our daily lives is not about doing things differently. It’s about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in our work that we have done for many years may take us

them feel good about themselves because he accepted them as they were.

It is interesting to see in the Scriptures that Jesus liked to associate with common, ordinary, everyday people—people like you and me, not people who somehow thought they were better than everyone else. His friends were ordinary people like Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. The men he chose as his apostles were ordinary men with ordinary jobs as fishermen. So many of the people he dealt with and often healed were just ordinary, common people like Bartimaeus the blind man, the Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus the tax collector, the poor widow, the 10 lepers he cured, Mary Magdalene, and so many others. And when these ordinary people came into contact with Jesus, their lives changed—sometimes in dramatic ways. Jesus was the one who made them feel special, important, and loved.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INCARNATION

Because our daily lives are made up of common, ordinary things such as relationships, jobs, and everyday activities, it is important to realize that growing in the spiritual life has everything to do with how we live our daily lives with all the ordinary things that happen to us each day. The beauty and importance of being human and living our everyday experiences flow from the Incarnation. Because God became one 46 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

of us, he has made all creation holy. All the ordinary, mundane aspects of our daily lives are made holy because the Word became flesh.

Because of the incarnation, we can find the Lord not only in the spectacular and in our prayers and monasteries, but also in our homes and in our everyday lives. As the writer Nikos Kazantzakis noted, “Wherever you find husband and wife, that’s where you find God; wherever children and petty cares and cooking and arguments and reconciliation are, there is where God is too.” Our God—who was born in a barn and grew up in a family—is a God who is found, first of all, in our homes, in our families, at our dinner tables, in sunrises, in our joys and sorrows, and even in our arguments and disagreements.

Even St. Teresa of Avila found it difficult at first to reconcile her understanding of prayer and grow in the spiritual life of the everyday, mundane tasks of her Carmelite convent. She found it difficult to understand how washing the pots and pans, sweeping the floors, and folding the laundry fitted in to her understanding of how to grow in holiness.

However, over time, and with grace, these everyday, common, ordinary tasks became for her another kind of prayer, a way in which she could stay connected to the Lord throughout the day. As she said, she began to see the face of God in the folded sheets.

MICHAL KNITL/FOTOSEARCH

completely by surprise.

THE IMPACT OF SEEING

Finding God within the daily events in our lives depends so much on how we see things. The writer Marcel Proust said that the voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes. This is so important for our spiritual lives. There is an old Carolina story I like about a country boy who had a great talent for carving beautiful dogs out of wood. Every day, he sat on his porch whittling, letting the shavings fall around him. One day, a visitor, greatly impressed, asked him the secret of his art. “I just take a block of wood and whittle off the parts that don’t look like a dog,” he replied.

Often, finding God in the events of our daily lives is not about doing things differently. It’s about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in our work that we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. When we find new eyes, old friends become new again and we see them in a deeper way.

When we find new eyes, problems can sometimes turn into opportunities.

And isn’t this the way Jesus saw people—with his heart?

When Jesus saw the 10 lepers, he didn’t see them as outcasts of society, but as people who needed healing. When he saw Zacchaeus the tax collector up in the sycamore tree, he didn’t see someone that everyone else despised, but someone seeking motivation to change his life. When he saw the Samaritan woman at the well, he didn’t see someone whom he shouldn’t associate with, but someone looking for a deeper meaning in life. Jesus saw others with his heart.

you look at things, the things you look at change.” What if we could change the way we see people who might be very different from us—the homeless, the abused, the hungry, the rejected, the poor? If we could see them with our hearts, the way Jesus did, then maybe we, too, might find ourselves sitting by our Samaritan well, more interested in breaking down barriers than in religious dos and don’ts. We would wrap a towel around our waist and try to serve one another.

Additionally, we might come to the rescue of others, like Jesus with the adulterous woman about to be stoned, as we try to bind up the wounds around us and do our small part to create community and justice for everyone. What if we could change the way we see the LGBT community or immigrants? If we saw them with our hearts, the way Jesus did, we would see them as our brothers and sisters, who feel the way we feel, who hurt, who have hopes and dreams for their lives just as we do.

Allowing these beliefs to penetrate our hearts can give us confidence and guidance as we strive to accept and love ourselves and others along our journey.

A resident of Aiken, South Carolina, Peter Wilcox is a retired psychotherapist and adjunct university professor whose writing has appeared in The Way and this publication, among others. A married father and private pilot, he enjoys tennis and travel.

MICHAL KNITL/FOTOSEARCH

CLOTHING OTHERS WITH RESPECT

The reason why it is so important to see others with our hearts is because it has a huge impact on how we treat them.

For example, in Robert Coles’ account of meeting Dorothy Day, he recalled that Dorothy was sitting at a table with a woman who was obviously very drunk. At first, Coles thought this was very strange—that she would be wasting her time trying to talk with a woman who could barely speak coherently. But as he watched her, he could tell that Dorothy was trying to be present to this lady, which left a remarkable impression on him. Even though the woman was drunk, Dorothy paid attention to her. She had seen this woman with her heart. And in that moment, Dorothy had clothed her with respect. Hers was a compassionate presence.

We seem to live in an age where this idea of reverence and respect has lost much of its importance in life. When we look around us, there seem to be so much irreverence and disrespect. The way we sometimes talk about and treat one another is an indication of that. But reverence and respect are such important dimensions of life. They color so much the way we go about living the events of each day. And it all begins with the way we see others.

*limited to the first 200 customers

ACCEPTANCE LEADS TO CHANGE

Psychologist Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 47

media MATTERS

Reel TIMe | channel surfing | audio file | BooKshelf

By Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP

FAVORITE

SUMMER

FILMS The Way Way Back (2013) The Parent Trap (1961 and 1998) What About Bob? (1991) Stand by Me (1986) Do the Right Thing (1989)

T

his screen adaptation of Anton Chekov’s play about the aging and ailing Sorin (Brian Dennehy), his sister, the famous actress Irina (Annette Bening), and the lovers, relatives, neighbors, and employees in their rural universe reveals the existential crisis of prerevolutionary Russia’s bourgeoisie. I enjoyed seeing this adaptation of the Russian playwright’s famous work, directed by Michael Mayer and deftly written by Stephen Karam.

The film opens with the closing scene: As Irina takes leave of her brother to return to Moscow, a gunshot is heard. The story then unfolds with Irina’s son, Konstantin (Billy Howle), mounting a play he has written in the garden of the family’s country cottage. He casts Nina (Saoirse Ronan), a neighbor and aspiring actress with whom he is in love, as the star.

Konstantin also wants to impress the writer Boris (Corey Stoll) who is his mother’s younger lover and with whom Nina is infatuated. Moping around the house dressed in black and mostly drunk is Masha (Elizabeth Moss), who is in love with Konstantin. Add to this Dorn (Jon Tenney), with whom the housekeeper (Mare Winningham) is in love,

48 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

and the schoolteacher Mikhail (Michael Zegen), who is in love with Masha, and it’s like watching an engrossing and funny soap opera.

But what we are really watching is a highly constructed study of characters who must interact in a fairly isolated and confined place, however beautiful and comfortable, for a short period of time. Some characters have insight and empathy, but most are unhappy and lack these attributes. The saddest part is Irina’s cruel mockery of her son’s efforts to be an artist who is interiorly free. It is an idea that never occurs to most of the characters, and it leads Konstantin to make a desperate choice.

Not yet rated, PG-13 • Mature themes.

SUMMER 1993: OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES; BEAST: BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

SISTER ROSE’S

THE SEAGULL

LEFT: SISTER NANCY USSELMANN; THE SEAGULL: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Sister Rose is a Daughter of St. Paul and the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies. She has been the award-winning film columnist for St. Anthony Messenger since 2003 and is the author of several books on Scripture and film, as well as media literacy education.

BEAST

O

SUMMER 1993

Director Carla Simón

SUMMER 1993: OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES; BEAST: BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

LEFT: SISTER NANCY USSELMANN; THE SEAGULL: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

W

hen Frida (Laia Artigas) loses her single mother to AIDS, the 6-year-old girl’s life in Barcelona changes dramatically. Her relatives send her to live with her aunt (Bruna Cusí), uncle (David Verdaguer), and cousin Anna (Paula Robles) in Catalan.

Before leaving home, her grandmother teaches Frida her prayers, especially the Our Father, and tells her she must recite it every night—and she does.

Frida has no understanding of why the doctor still wants to test her blood, even though the doctors in Barcelona said she was fine. The neighbors in her

new home know why her mother died.

When Frida skins her knee at the park, the mothers move their children away from her. Her aunt and uncle, however, are accepting and loving though Frida does not always make it easy.

Frida and Anna spend the summer playing in the countryside, but Anna acts out. Frida finds a small shrine to St. Rita of Cascia, and though she does not understand, she takes solace from visiting the saint. Her relatives come to visit, but over time, Frida begins to call her aunt and uncle “mama” and “papa.”

This is a quiet, contemplative film about family ties and how an epidemic affects a young child trying to navigate a new world. The children’s acting is inspired. The story is based on director Carla Simón’s personal experience and was named by the National Board of Review as one of the top five international films of 2017. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Not yet rated • Mature themes.

Catholic News Service Media Review Office gives these ratings.

A-1 General patronage

A-2 Adults and adolescents

A-3 Adults

L Limited adult audience

O Morally offensive

Source: USCCB.org/movies

n the British island of Jersey, a serial killer is on the loose. Moll (Jessie Buckley), a 27-year-old woman who gives historic tours, still lives in the home dominated by her imperious mother, Hilary (Geraldine James), who tries to control her daughter with simply a cold stare. We discover that Moll was bullied as a child: She once lashed out at a girl, leaving her with a scar.

After that incident, Hilary educated Moll at home.

When Moll is humiliated at her own birthday celebration, she takes off to the local pub and roams the beaches with a strange man. When he makes a move on her, Moll resists and is rescued by a local hunter and handyman, Pascal (Johnny Flynn). That same night, a young woman is killed. Suspicion falls on the scruffy Pascal, who has a police record. The town and Moll’s family look down on Pascal, but she nevertheless moves in with him. Things heat up when Pascal is arrested and Moll is brought in for questioning.

Beast is a psychological thriller with terrific acting. Just when you think that one person is the beast, you learn the truth. It makes you ponder the consequences of bullying on the fragile psyche of children too.

Not yet rated, R • Violence, sexuality, peril.

?

WANT MORE? Visit our website: StAnthonyMessenger.org

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 49

media MATTERS

REEL TIME | CHANNEL SURFING | AUDIO FILE | BOOKSHELF

By Christopher Heffron UP CLOSE

Aerial America

Smithsonian Channel, check local listings

“

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding,” author John Updike wrote. If you’ve been to New York City—or know somebody who calls that glorious urban sprawl home—you’d understand the truth behind it. New Yorkers inherently believe their city is the center of the world because, in some ways, it is. The pulse of the globe’s financial establishment is slowed or quickened by the failures and successes of the New York Stock Exchange. Fashion, art, writing, real estate, and cooking live and breathe in this city unlike anywhere else in the world. Home to over 8.5 million citizens, the city is the subject of Amazon’s penetrating documentary series New York Confidential. Channel surfers with an affinity for urban life would be wise to tune in.

Confidential soars where other docuseries tend to falter in that filmmakers wisely get out of the way of the stories they tell. What viewers are left with is a bare-bones glimpse into a bruised but beautiful city.

In the first episode, we encounter Canadian-born photographer Clayton Patterson, who has photographed residents of the Lower East Side for 25 years.

Felicia Young, founder of Earth Celebrations, has saved dozens of the city’s diminishing community gardens. And we meet William Leroy, a proud (and proudly profane) antiques dealer in the Bowery District, who doles out wisdom and vulgarities in equal measure. Wall Street brokers, gallery owners, club promoters, artisans, and trendsetters add additional color to the series.

But it isn’t always a love letter. From the throes of immigrants who came to the Lower East Side at the turn of the century (and the poverty they faced), to the crack epidemic 80 years later, to the 9/11 attacks, Manhattan’s history is dense and thrilling and jagged. For armchair wanderers who haven’t the bank or the brawn to experience New York firsthand, this series is an honest look at a city with an ever-pounding heartbeat.

50 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

ne of the more hilarious moments from ABC’s Modern Family involved a drone that was harassing the character of Gloria, played by Sofía Vergara, and her family. Fed up with the constant midair spying, she blithely takes out her handgun and blows it out of the sky. In the real world, such a measure would be extreme, to say the least. On television, however, it’s comedy gold. But sometimes aerial photography can be used for nobler purposes—as is the case with Smithsonian’s somewhat meandering but thrilling series Aerial America.

The premise of the program is appropriately uncomplicated. Each episode focuses on a destination site in the United States and gives viewers a bird’s-eye view of the territory in question. Minimalist narration further tells the story. It sounds simple—and it is—but the experience can be powerful.

From the roaring waves of the Pacific, to the endless expanse of the Mojave Desert; from the bayou country of Louisiana, to the smogridden skyline of Los Angeles, Smithsonian’s Aerial America is ideal viewing for the Fourth of July holiday.

MOBY: MUTE RECORDS; JOAN BAEZ: A&M RECORDS; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

Amazon Prime

O

NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL: TANA/FOTOSEARCH, INSET: ERIKVANINGEN/FOTOSEARCH; AERIAL AMERICA: IOFOTO/FOTOSEARCH

New York Confidential

REEL TIME | CHANNEL SURFING | AUDIO FILE | BOOKSHELF

Editor’s Pick Retro-spective

JOAN BAEZ | GRACIAS A LA VIDA

orn in 1941, folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez has spent her life promoting nonviolence and justice for the poor and oppressed, themes that resonate with the Catholic conscience. By the time Baez released Gracias a la Vida in 1974, she already had 16 albums under her belt. It was time to try something different.

Most of the song selections are covers and traditional tunes from across Latin America. The title track, “Gracias a la Vida” (“Thanks to Life”), was written by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra. A bittersweet ballad about the joys and sorrows of life, the song gets right to the epicenter of the soul of Latin America. “Te Recuerdo Amanda” (“I Remember You, Amanda”) is a song composed by Victor Jara, who was tortured and killed during the 1973 Chilean coup.

An interesting side note is that Baez received the Thomas Merton Award— given annually to “national and international individuals struggling for justice”—one year after the release of Gracias a la Vida.

MOBY | EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL, AND NOTHING HURT

O

ne of the many great things about music is how it engages the whole range of human emotion, allowing the listener to feel what the artist is feeling—whether it be a time of celebration or a time of trial and tribulation.

In a sense, music can be like a prayer of solidarity. In Moby’s latest album, Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt, the artist lets us in on his innermost struggles in a way that’s both relatable and rewarding.

Moby revisits the downtempo style of some of his prior releases, and present are his signature synthesizer strings, haunting female guest vocalists, and his own pensive, whispered vocal delivery. Within seconds of the opening track, “Mere Anarchy,” the sound is immediately recognizable as a Moby record. Yet much has changed in his life and in the world, and it’s this shift in perspective and feeling that drives the album.

Now 10 years sober, Moby (whose real name is Richard Hall) battled addiction during his years on the rise to becoming one of the world’s most revered electronic musicians. The music here shows that he is still grappling with feelings of brokenness. In a way, Everything Was Beautiful is a lamentation, but, like a “good cry,” there is something rejuvenating and restorative in listening to this album.

In “This Wild Darkness,” Moby sings, “I can’t stand on my own anymore/I can’t stand in the stain of the broken and poor/I can’t break what I held and it never was true/In the mirror what I said was a lie to you.” In his vulnerable state, he realizes that he can’t make it through life by himself: We need God and each other to carry on. The chorus, backed by a trio of soaring female vocals, is a simple but profound prayer: “In this darkness/Please light my way/Light my way.”

Other song highlights include “Welcome to Hard Times” and “A Dark Cloud Is Coming.” Despite the darkness suggested by many of the song titles, this is an album of achingly beautiful melodies, introspection, and, ultimately, an affirmation of God’s healing grace.

MOBY: MUTE RECORDS; JOAN BAEZ: A&M RECORDS; PETE & REPEAT: TOM GREENE

PETE&REPEAT

These scenes may seem alike to you, But there are changes in the two.

So look and see if you can name Eight ways in which they’re not the same.

(Answers below)

GET THE BOOK

Great fun for puzzlers of all ages!

Go online to order: Shop.FranciscanMedia.org For ONLY $3.99 Use Code: SAMPETE ANSWERS to PETE & REPEAT: 1) Pete’s glass of lemonade has an ice cube. 2) Sis’ headband has a bow. 3) The cost of the lemonade has now gone up. 4) The glass on the left is taller. 5) An extra stripe is on the side of the tablecloth. 6) A black stripe is on the side of Pete’s pant leg. 7) The bush behind Pete is larger. 8) The cloud in the upper right is bigger.

NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL: TANA/FOTOSEARCH, INSET: ERIKVANINGEN/FOTOSEARCH; AERIAL AMERICA: IOFOTO/FOTOSEARCH

B

By Daniel Imwalle

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 51

media MATTERS

reel time | channel surfing | audio file | bookshelf

By Julie Traubert

Catholicism in Early America

“The colonial mind, in so many instances, proves true the observation of American historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr., that anti-Catholicism is the deepest bias in the American people.”

PIONEER PRIESTS AND MAKESHIFT ALTARS

BY FATHER CHARLES CONNOR EWTN Publishing

F

ather Charles Connor provides an extensive look at the history of Catholicism during America’s colonial period. His purpose is to elevate this much-needed story from the forgotten dustbin of history. Father Connor is clear-eyed and logical, providing the necessary background of the Protestant Reformation and the impact of Martin Luther and John Calvin in establish-

ing a movement that would impact the Roman Catholic Church in Europe and in the 13 American colonies.

Many Catholic Americans know that the colony of Maryland was established as a haven for religious freedom for persecuted Catholics in England. In 1649, Maryland’s colonial assembly passed the “Toleration Act of 1649” permitting Catholics to practice their faith freely and openly. But not unlike other moments in American history where progress is often met with pushback, as non-Catholics began settling in Maryland, the law was later reneged, placing Catholics once more at the center of political opposition and oppression.

Father Connor lays out the foundations of an anti-Catholic prejudice that still rears its ugly head in modern American life.

Catholics Are Cool

Of particular interest on these pages is the story of the Jesuits during colonization, how Catholics were persecuted during the American Revolution, the unique relationship between the Quakers and Catholics, and other tales that explain how Catholics in the colonies endured and prospered.

One drawback of the book is its academic prose. This is not the kind of book one can pick up for quick reading. Individuals who enjoy academia will relish it. One must approach Father Connor’s writing with a studious intention. Still, it is an important contribution not only to Church history, but to American history as well.

Reviewed by James A. Percoco, who is a member of the National Teachers Hall of Fame and serves as a eucharistic minister at Nativity Parish in Burke, Virginia.

“For two thousand years Catholics have been going against the trend, standing up in the face of the popular cultural beliefs of the day, and we’ve been epically cool, if I do say so myself. We’ve overcome every single adversary who has tried to work on our demise.”

T

he Catholic Hipster Handbook takes a new look at the old religion of Catholicism. From lesser-known prayers to odd feast days and saints who got their titles in weird ways, author Tommy Tighe and company have them all. Written in easy-to-digest chapters, the book reads like a daily devotional. The chapters begin with a short anecdote about a topic and move into discussion of a cool saint and then to a forgotten prayer. Each chapter ends with an activity, either a challenge for something to do or to incorporate into daily life to feel closer to God.

52 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

Although the term hipster may seem to refer more to the younger generation, people from any walk of life will enjoy learning about saints who have been lost to obscurity or prayers from outside the normal routine.

With a wide variety of contributors, ranging from priests to comedians, the writing style is never dull, and reading the different perspectives feels like having a chat with a group of new friends.

Although I may not be growing a beard or running out to the record store to find my favorite artists on vinyl, this book made me feel like a

THE CATHOLIC HIPSTER HANDBOOK

BY TOMMY TIGHE Ave Maria Press

welcome addition to the Catholic hipster community.

Reviewed by Richard Meyer, who is currently studying for a master’s in health-care administration at the University of Cincinnati.

WHAT I AM LIVING FOR EDITED BY JON SWEENEY Ave Maria Press

THE MONK’S RECORD PLAYER

MERTON’S PALACE OF NOWHERE

BY ROBERT HUDSON

BY JAMES FINLEY

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Ave Maria Press

“Perhaps the central theme of all of Merton’s works is contemplation.”

“Our images of Thomas Merton and Bob Dylan are founded on where they were in 1966.”

“Who I am must never be prostituted to the demands of what others tell me I must do.”

D

W

W

ecember will mark 50 years since the death of Thomas Merton, the monk who needs no introduction. Oh, that he had lived these past 50 years (though he would be just over 100!).

It seems publishers wish that, too, and keep finding new ways to bring his classic works to the market. Sweeney has done something new here, in persuading a group of contemporary spiritual greats to look back on the Trappist master.

The table of contents reads like a who’s who on the current spirituality list. From Bishop Robert Barron to Friar Dan Horan, to James Martin, SJ, to Kaya Oakes, Mary Neill, and lesser known but powerful writers such as Achyra Judith Simmer-Brown, Sue Monk Kidd, and John-Julian, each offers his or her own take on Merton’s life and writings.

ho would have thunk? I suppose if one knew more about Merton, he or she might have known what an influence singer/poet/icon-of-the1960s Bob Dylan had on the monk. It takes this combo Merton-Dylan scholar to weave it all together. Author Robert Hudson, an influential editor, is both a Dylan biographer and a member of the International Thomas Merton Society.

He writes a parallel biography of two of the most prolific thinkers (and writers) of the society-transforming 1960s.

Herein are creativity and crisis, burnout and redemption, shared by both of these profoundly prophetic and influential voices. Did you know singer Joan Baez was big in both of their lives?

What Our Readers Recommend A Devotional Journey into the Mass, by Christopher Carstens I Shall Not Hate, by Izzeldin Abuelaish

KIDS’

SPOT T

hat better way to mark an anniversary than to publish an anniversary edition? James Finley’s book on Merton’s spirituality, first published in 1978, written by one of Merton’s former novices, is seminal. (When Joyce Rupp says, on the cover, “This book will never leave my library,” you should sit up straight and listen!) Henri Nouwen wrote the foreword to the first edition; Finley has written a new preface for this one. In 120 accessible pages, the book reintroduces all of us to Thomas Merton in a way still fresh, rich, and authoritative. The challenges brimming in the 1960s never receded.

THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED

BY LEE HYOUN-JU

his graphic novel tells the story of St. Christopher, one that deals with conversion and the battle between good and evil. It will be especially appealing for readers ages 9–12. The story is action-packed as one page of illustrations yields to the next.

Books featured in this section can be ordered from:

A Saint in the Sun, by David N. Bell

St. Mary’s Bookstore & Church Supply

Left to Tell, by Immaculée Ilibagiza

web: www.stmarysbookstore.com e-mail: stmarysbookstore@gmail.com

God’s Canvas, by Father James Kurzynski

1909 West End Avenue • Nashville, TN 37203 • 800-233-3604

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 53

POINTSOFVIEW | FAITH & FAMILY

My Backyard Chapel

By Susan Hines-Brigger

Susan welcomes your comments and suggestions!

E-MAIL: CatholicFamily@ FranciscanMedia.org MAIL: Faith & Family 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202

T

he other morning, I went out and sat on our back porch. It’s something that I often do on the weekends. It’s my time before everyone else in the house gets up and our hectic life shifts into high gear. I go out there to pray, write, decompress, and reflect.

It is, in many ways, my own personal chapel. There are no stained glass windows, but there is a wide variety of colorful flowers all around, including the rosebush just off the porch that was given to me when my mom died. Past the vegetable garden that provides our family with nourishment, a statue of St. Francis looks on from the back corner of the yard. The fire pit, a few yards away from the porch, speaks to the gathering of family and friends many nights, celebrating the blessings of relationships—and very often s’mores.

This porch is a physical connection between my past—growing up in this house—and the present—moving back after Mom’s death.

When I was younger, I would often watch my dad sit on the back porch in the evenings and gaze out onto the yard. Sometimes my sisters and I would join him and fall asleep on the glider next to him. I always wondered what he was looking at. I wonder if he was looking out on the same things I do now.

Even these days, when he comes to the house every Sunday from the retirement village where he now lives, he sits and gazes out on the backyard. Does it offer him the same spiritual experience as it does for me?

HOW DO YOU PRAY?

?

WANT MORE? Visit our website: StAnthonyMessenger.org

As I sat on the porch that particular day, there was a slight breeze blowing. The sun was just beginning to extend its rays over the giant tree in my neighbor’s backyard, casting a soft glow

54 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

on the world below it. My dog, Tigger, was curled up and fast asleep on the couch beside me. The words of Psalm 46 repeated in my head: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Suddenly, my youngest daughter, Kacey, appeared in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m praying,” I told her.

“It doesn’t look like it,” she countered.

“It looks like you’re just sitting there in your pajamas, doing nothing.”

“Really?” I jokingly shot back at her. “And what exactly does prayer look like?” She proceeded to give me the standard bow-yourhead-and-fold-your-hands answer. Then she recited a few of the prayers she has learned over the past few years in school, such as the Hail Mary and Glory Be—just in case I had forgotten them.

That’s certainly one way—and an important way—to pray, I told her. But it’s not the only way. Sometimes, I said, a prayer can be as simple as saying “thank you” or just acknowledging and appreciating the blessings you have.

“When I sit out here, I say prayers of thanks for all the things I see around me—the trees, the breeze, the sounds of the birds and the bells from the church up the street,” I said.

Finally, I told her how I pray for her and her siblings who are often asleep inside when I’m out here. Of course, that prayer is usually immediately followed by a prayer of thanks for this all-too-infrequent brief period of peace and quiet.

I’m not sure she bought into it, but I hope that maybe someday she will understand and discover her own personal chapel—wherever that may be.

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: BOTTOM: ZIGZAGMTART; TOP RIGHT: MIRAGE3

Susan has worked at St. Anthony Messenger for 24 years and is an executive editor. She and her husband, Mark, are the proud parents of four kids—Maddie, Alex, Riley, and Kacey. Aside from her family, her loves are Disney, traveling, and sports.

LEFT: MC KOZUSKO/SAM; RIGHT: IRINA88W/FOTOSEARCH

Susan Hines-Brigger

in the kitchen

with Susan Muto

Lemon Meringue Pie

Yield: 6–8 servings • prep time: 30 minutes, cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients: ½ cup

sugar

3 tbls.

cornstarch

½ tsp.

salt

3

egg yolks, beaten; set aside the whites for the meringue

1½ cups water ½ cup

fresh lemon juice

2 tsp.

lemon zest

1 tbls.

butter

1 to 2 drops of yellow food coloring (optional) ¼ tsp.

cream of tartar

6 tbls.

sugar

½ tsp.

vanilla

FIND THIS AND OTHER RECIPES AT: FranciscanMedia.org/source/recipes

Instructions: In a saucepan, mix together the 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add in the egg yolks, water, lemon juice, lemon zest, butter, and food coloring. Cook slowly over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens into a custard. Cool, then pour into a baked piecrust.

(Use your favorite piecrust recipe or purchase a premade one.)

he food we prepare and consume with gusto ought to be fresh and full of surprises, never dull and drably routine. One day we need a soft touch, another a brisk knock.

Is it possible that there could be an analogy between spiritual living and making piecrust? At times it comes out flaky and baked to perfection; at other times it is too tough, too loaded with shortening to digest, or simply too overworked.

“Don’t try too hard to make it happen,” Mother reminded me. Learn to let go, to let be, and to live lightly.

usan Muto invites you to experience meals as a sacred time.

GH

SuSan Muto is the executive director of the Epiphany association, a nonprofit ecumenical education, consultation, and research center. a prolific author and internationally renowned teacher and speaker, she holds an M.a. and ph.D. in English literature from the university of pittsburgh.

G ood Fo od for B o d y an d S p i r it

her love for cooking permeates this book, as she shares her memories of growing up in an Italian family with a mother who also loved to cook. Muto’s stories make you feel as if you are right there in the kitchen with her and her mother as they go about preparing meals, each of which becomes an opportunity to experience the goodness of God through the food we eat and the company we share. Muto also includes recipes that are simple to prepare, using ingredients that are readily available.

Whether you are a novice cook or highly experienced, or just enjoy good food, this book will bring you to a new understanding of the gift we share when we take the time to eat well.

Table of Plenty

S

G ood Food f or B ody and S p ir it Muto

“A compelling book about the intimate connection between the food we eat and the nourishment required for a healthy spiritual life.”

— F r . r a l p h ta j a k , o . S . B . , chaplain of the Epiphany association

FOTOSEARCH IMAGES: BOTTOM: ZIGZAGMTART; TOP RIGHT: MIRAGE3

T

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until the egg whites are thick and foamy. Add the 6 tbls. sugar, one tablespoon at a time, and then the vanilla. Beat until the egg whites form stiff peaks. Spoon the meringue on top of the lemon custard, and bake until the meringue turns light brown, about 10 minutes. Let the pie cool away from drafts so the meringue does not droop.

LIMITED COPIES AVAILABLE. GET YOURS NOW!

enty en nty Table of Plenty s t o r ies r e f l ectio ns r eci pe s

CookInG—Essays & narratives

SuSan Muto Muto_Table of Plenty_CVR.indd 1

Go online to order the book: Shop.FranciscanMedia.org For 20% OFF Use Code: SAMTABLE 1/7/14 3:54 PM

StAnthonyMessenger.org | July 2018 • 55

reflection

“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”

TONYGERS/FOTOSEARCH

—Charles Bowden

56 • July 2018 | StAnthonyMessenger.org

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