From the fridge to the fire

January 17, 2010

Peace and Good,

Well, the retreat in Little Falls Minnesota with the Franciscan Sisters went well. There were over 50 of them (both sisters and some of their associates). The theme of the retreat was the Gospel of Luke, which provides ample material for a retreat or a parish mission.

I was impressed with the spirit of the sisters. There is a real sense of Franciscan hospitality in their mother house.

During the retreat I saw the terrible news about Haiti. That country is so poor and poorly run on a good day, and now this devastation. I was impressed with the coverage on CNN. Long before the other networks even reported it, Wolf Blitzer was covering it full time. He must have realized what a true disaster it would be.

At the end of the retreat I was asked to celebrate the funeral mass of one of the sisters, Sr. Seraphine. From what the sisters said, she had a great sense of humor and was a bit of a trickster. She was in her early 90's when she passed away.

I travelled home on Thursday night and flew out again on Friday morning, this time to St. Joan of Arc Parish in Spring Hill, Florida. The people here were complaining about how it got down to 19 last week, and I spoke to them of the fact that it got down to -19 in Little Falls (although, ironically, it was probably more difficult here than there because in Minnesota they build houses to withstand the cold but down here there is so little insulation). The theme this week, as well, will be the Gospel of Luke.

I finished a paperback that I picked up at the airport a while ago: Dark Harbor by Stuart Woods. It was a murder mystery, but not all that good. The characters weren't really developed nor was there that sense of mystery and surprise that I like in a book.

I also finished another book on my kindle: Dante and His Times by Arthur John Butler. This was one of the free books. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. It was OK at best. Yet, every time I read one of these books, I learn just a little bit more about the topic, so I guess it was not a waste of time.

My future schedule is as follows:

01/16/10 - 01/20/10: St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Spring, Hill, FL - Parish Mission

01/23/10 - 01/28/10: St. Gregory Catholic Church, Plantation, FL - Parish Mission

01/30/10 - 02/04/10: St. Gregory, the Great Catholic Church, San Diego, CA - Parish Mission

02/06/10 - 02/11/10: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, Lakeside, CA - Parish Mission

02/13/10 - 02/18/10: Holy Trinity Catholic Church, El Cajon, CA - Parish Mission

02/20/10 - 02/25/10: St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Leonardtown, MD - Parish Mission

02/27/10 - 03/04/10: St. Thomas More Catholic Church, Oceanside, CA - Parish Mission

God bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude

From warm to cold

January 10, 2010

The Baptism of Our Lord

Peace and Good,

This past week I was out in California giving a retreat to the seminarians at St. Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park (San Francisco). They are a good group of men. There were 56 of them from many different lands and backgrounds. They come from many of the different dioceses on the West Coast.

The theme of the retreat was the priesthood (this being the year of the priest). They especially seemed to enjoy the pastoral content - experiences that I have had in my priesthood.

Being in California, I received a jolt one morning when we had a c 4.0 earthquake (enough to feel it but not to knock anything over). This was only a couple of days before they had the much greater earthquake in northern California.

Thursday I flew to Chicago where I over-nighted, and then the next morning on to Minneapolis. You should have seen the looks on people's faces when I went through the airport with my sandals and no socks.

This week I am giving a retreat on the Gospel of Luke to a group of the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, MN. In California it was in the 50's and 60's, the other morning they reported that it was -19 during the night not to far from here.

I finished two books. One was for my spiritual reading: Saint Ignatius by Christoper Hollis. This book is quite old (I picked it up at a parish where they were throwing it out). It is written by an Englishman and shows a lot of 1920's English humor. It wasn't as detailed as I would have hoped, but it did give me a basic background on the conversion and life of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

The second book was Flannery: A life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch. This was an excellent book. Flannery was a Catholic fiction writer in the south after the war. She died of Lupus in the early 60's. She wrote mostly fiction, and much of it has a gothic overtone. Yet, she was very feisty, always ready with a retort to what she considered to be inane or hypocritical. She was a fervent Catholic (having her St. Thomas Aquinas right by her bedside). I want to read more about her and also read some of her stories. She fascinates me. I use one of her quotes in my homilies, "For those who are in love with God, they slowly realize that life is part of a divine conspiracy."

Here is my coming calendar:

01/08/10 - 01/14/10: Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Little Falls, MN - Sisters' Retreat

01/16/10 - 01/20/10: St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Spring, Hill, FL - Parish Mission

01/23/10 - 01/28/10: St. Gregory Catholic Church, Plantation, FL - Parish Mission

01/30/10 - 02/04/10: St. Gregory, the Great Catholic Church, San Diego, CA - Parish Mission

02/06/10 - 02/11/10: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, Lakeside, CA - Parish Mission

02/13/10 - 02/18/10: Holy Trinity Catholic Church, El Cajon, CA - Parish Mission

02/20/10 - 02/25/10: St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Leonardtown, MD - Parish Mission

(Sometimes it makes me tired just thinking about it!)

God bless and

Shalom

fr. Jude

Happy New Year

January 3, 2010

Happy New Year

I had a peaceful Christmas at the friary and the day after I drove up to Pittsburgh to baptize my niece Abigail. She is a cute baby with hair that stick straight up. He brother Nolan has grown so much since I saw him last. Right after the baptism last Sunday I drove home to Ellicott City.

This week I have been editing a series of talks I gave in Kenya last summer (13 of them). I think some of them are good enough to be a series we offer, but I still have to think it through.

I also had some dental work done, a tooth extracted. While I was in the chair, I offered up my suffering for a woman in California who has offered up all of her sufferings from bone cancer for the sanctification of priests. Every time I do that, I suffer very little. It is as if her offering and mine become one, and God somehow takes it upon himself. I do not fully understand, but I have been thinking about it as I read a biography of Flannery O'Connor who was a Catholic author in the south who suffered from Lupus.

I finished a few works this week. One was Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. It was brutal in parts, and disturbing in others, but generally well written. There is a character who says to himself at the end of the book that he realizes that he is evil, but that is OK because he loves his family and community. Believe me, that kind of line sticks with you.

I finished the Memoirs of General Grant. It was six volumes, and the first ones were the best. The last part was written when he was ill with cancer, and it shows signs of having been put together in a hurry. A lot of names and battles, but not a lot of himself put into the explanation.

I also finished the Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G.Wells. I had always heard of this book and even seen the film, but never read it. It asks some good questions about experimentation with animals and people, pain, and how humanlike animals can become and how beastlike humans can become. The descriptions of the processes by which Dr. Moreau changes the animals into humanlike creatures are antiquated, but when one thinks about genetic engineering, it come to life again.

I am giving a seminarians' retreat at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California this week. Please keep me in your prayers. My future schedule is:

01/03/10 - 01/07/10: St. Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, CA - Seminarian Retreat

01/08/10 - 01/14/10: Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Little Falls, MN - Sisters' Retreat

01/16/10 - 01/20/10: St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Spring, Hill, FL - Parish Mission

01/23/10 - 01/28/10: St. Gregory Catholic Church, Plantation, FL - Parish Mission

01/30/10 - 02/04/10: St. Gregory, the Great Catholic Church, San Diego, CA - Parish Mission

02/06/10 - 02/11/10: Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, Lakeside, CA - Parish Mission

02/13/10 - 02/18/10: Holy Trinity Catholic Church, El Cajon, CA - Parish Mission

God bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude

The Peace of Christmas

December 26, 2009

This time of the year is, ironically, quite quiet of me. While everyone else is running around taking care of holiday chores, I get to set back and take it easy a bit. There really aren't very many missions at this time of the year.

I was able to use this time to catch up a bit with my family. I spent a few days in Buffalo visiting my brother and sister. While I was there, I also visited two sisters who taught me in grammar school: Sr. Florence and Sr. Vincentia. They are Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. My family was always close to the sisters and friars at my home parish of St. Francis in Athol Springs.

Today I will take off for Pittsburgh because tomorrow I will be baptizing my grand niece. I am on the road so much that I often miss family events, so it is great when I am able to be present.

Yesterday, I was able to have Mass at a retirement village. The weather down here was not that great yesterday, so the folks there would not have had Mass otherwise. I prefer doing something like that on Christmas to having Mass at on over packed Church. There was just a goodness to it.

I have finished a couple of books. The first is a history of the armies of the Roman Empire called Storming the Heavens by Antonio Santosuosso. It gives a good overview of how the armies of Rome changed throughout its history from a civilian force to a mercenary force made up of barbarians hired to protect the empire from barbarians.

The second book was one that I read on my new Kindle. I received a gift from someone and asked the guardian if I could purchase an electronic book. I have been so pleased with it. It is especially giving me a chance to read some of the classics (many of which are free of charge on Kindle through Amazon.com). I finished the first volume of the Personal Memoirs of President Grant (volume one - there are five more to go). It goes from his youth to the earliest days of the Civil War. He is a fairly good author and it is interesting to read the story from his point of view, especially when I know other parts of the story from other sources.

Hope you have a good week. Here is my schedule for the next weeks.

01/03/10 - 01/07/10: St. Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, CA - Seminarian Retreat

01/08/10 - 01/14/10: Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Little Falls, MN - Sisters' Retreat

01/16/10 - 01/20/10: St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Spring, Hill, FL - Parish Mission

01/23/10 - 01/28/10: St. Gregory Catholic Church, Plantation, FL - Parish Mission

01/30/10 - 02/04/10: St. Gregory, the Great Catholic Church, San Diego, CA - Parish Mission

God bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude

Last Mission of the Year

December 17, 2009

Peace and Good,

I just concluded my last mission of the year at St. George's Parish in Valley Lee, MD. This is in southern Maryland, and the spirit down there is quite different from Ellicott City. Most of the people who live in this area are from somewhere else. That is not true of southern Maryland. It is farm country and also closely tied to the Bay and water culture. The people were very friendly and more laid back than those of us who live close to the beltway.

The theme was on Advent. The first day I spoke on the early prophecies of the Messiah (in Genesis, Numbers, etc.). These prophecies were not, for the most part, explicitly about the Messiah, but they did point toward the goal that God had in mind for us. They also speak about how that goal was deferred by our sin, but how God will make it good for us again. The second day I spoke about the later prophecies, especially those in Isaiah and Micah. I mentioned how the prophets were speaking for their own days, but the Holy Spirit had much more in mind for what they were saying. The exceptions to this are the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah and Psalm 22 which are so explicit and fit the sufferings and death of Jesus so well that one would almost swear that they were written after Jesus' death (but they clearly weren't). The third day, which included a penance service, I spoke of the Infancy Narrative in the Gospel of Matthew, and then on the fourth day which included a healing Mass, I spoke of the Infancy Narrative in the Gospel of Luke.

I tried a new dish that I had never eaten: fried oysters. They were great! The parishioners kept myself and Msgr. Carl well fed all week long.

This coming week I will spend a few days in Buffalo visiting family and then in Pittsburgh for the Baptism of my great-niece.

I finished listening to one set of CD's. The book was called Justinian's Flea by William Rosen. It deals with the reign of one of the best emperors of the Byzantine Empire and how much of what he was trying to do came to naught because of an outbreak of Bubonic Plague. You really have to like history to be interested in this book. It is heavy both on historic detail (with many digressions) and scientific information about plague.

Here is an outline of by calendar for the coming month. I will keep giving you the update as I can.

01/03/10 - 01/07/10: St. Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, CA - Seminarian Retreat

01/08/10 - 01/14/10: Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Little Falls, MN - Sisters' Retreat

01/16/10 - 01/20/10: St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, Spring, Hill, FL - Parish Mission

01/23/10 - 01/28/10: St. Gregory Catholic Church, Plantation, FL - Parish Mission

God bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude

P.S. Merry Christmas!

Missions and Talks

December 11, 2009

Peace and Good,

All is well. Sorry that I am a little late in posting the blog this week, but I was working hard on the CD project for the Psalms workshop. I finished it last night. It ended up with six CD's and I am very pleased with how it turned out. If you want to order it, just e mail me at frajude@juno.com. It will cost $30 but I am not sure how much postage will be.

I preached a mission in St. Francis Parish in Vista, CA. It is in the San Diego diocese, not far from San Marcos where I gave a mission in October. The themes I developed were how we are called to the dignity of the children of God through our prayer (sharing in God's work of recreating the world in God's image) through our service of the broken and difficult people of this world. I spoke of how we damage that relationship with our addictions to things and attitudes. The last morning I gave a talk on some of the aspects of the Infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew. That afternoon and evening I helped with the two Advent penance services in the parish. The parish itself is quite large with large Anglo and Spanish elements along with a good sized Vietnamese contingent. They are especially committed to serving the poor (which is witnessed in the number of homeless who sleep on the grounds each evening).

On Sunday, I celebrated Mass in the morning with a lay run community in Relay. It is always like going back home when I am with them. In the evening I gave a talk on the Book of Genesis at St. Timothy parish in Walkersville, MD - about an hour away. On the evening of the 8th I gave a talk on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception here at the friary (I taped it and will have it out on CD sometime after Christmas). On Wednesday, I had a talk on the Infancy Narrative in Luke with the scripture sharing group at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Bethesda, MD, and a talk on the Psalms at Resurrection Parish in Ellicott City.

I have some great news. I had put out an all call to ask for help to get to Ghana this coming June. A very generous couple have given me a free ticket with their air miles program. I am so grateful to them. If anyone wants to send some help for this trip (incidental costs) or other trips to mission countries, we are setting up a small fund to help out with these needs.

I finished a couple of CD books. The first is The Glory of it All by Sean Wilsey. It was a difficult listen. It is about a boy whose parents break up. They are incredibly self absorbed. The new step mother is described as being a witch to the boy. He gets into all kinds of self-destructive activity, pretty much messing up his life until he is sent to a rescue program in Italy to bring him around. It shows what happens to children when parents are too absorbed with their own activities and lives.

The second book was Next by Michael Crichton. It is a book about genetic tinkering and shows some of the possible consequences of bad choices made by individuals and companies.

I also finished a spiritual reading book: Experience the Mystery: Pastoral Possibilities for Christian Mystagogy by David Regan. The book comes across like a doctoral thesis that is somewhat reworked to make it a little easier to read. His theses is that we need a way to invite people into the mystery of our Catholic Christian life in a holistic manner (and not just intellectually). He used the example of small faith sharing groups (base communities) in Latin America. The book offers some good insights, but it doesn't offer enough practical applications.

I will be in Valley Lee, MD this week for an Advent mission. In the future, I will post some of my future assignments on this site so if anyone wants to catch me in a site near your home, you will know in advance (I'll try to keep it a month ahead).

God Bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude

A Week at Home

Peace and Good,

December 2, 2009

This past week has been a good time at home. I had the two periods of recollection at the weekend. Throughout the week there was a series of meetings with the community (it is called a house chapter at which we discuss what is going on in the friary and what our future plans are) and with my spiritual directees. (I do not do too much spiritual direction because I am on the road so often, but there are a few people on my dance card.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful, peaceful time at home. Br. Gerry cooked the meal, and he is an excellent cook. The meal included the Baltimore favorite of sauerkraut with the turkey. When I first heard about that dish, I thought that they were kidding. I have never run across it anywhere else on my journeys.

I think that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. For me it is a family meal where everyone goes out of the way to be kind and welcoming. It is not commercial like so many of the other holidays.

I finished one book: The Steel Wave by Jeff Shaara. It is a historic novel telling the story of D Day. Jeff Shaara's father wrote Killer Angels about the Battle of Gettysburg, and he has followed his father's example. It is good reading (not too heavy or too scholarly).

I am back in San Diego this week for another mission, at a parish north of the city called Vista.

Work continues on the psalms' CD's. There are three done, and that is about half way through.

I am still begging for assistance with my trip to Ghana this coming June. As I mentioned last week, it will cost about $2,100 for the plane ticket, and the seminary where I am going cannot afford the cost. Is there anyone out there who could help? If so, please send your contribution to me at 12290 Folly Quarter Road; Ellicott City, MD 21042.

God bless and
Shalom

fr. Jude