Our Jesus of Mary and Joseph, Our Brother and Friend

Notre Dame de la Garde.
Photo by Hedwig Storch via Wikimedia Commons.

Four celebrations give us wonderful insight into Jesus. They come at the end of the Sundays of the church year in the lectionary and the sacramentary: the thirty-fourth Sunday Christ the King and the three solemnities of the Lord during ordinary time—Trinity Sunday, Body and Blood of Christ, and the Heart of Jesus.

King and kingdom go together. The Child of the Father, our Jesus of Mary and Joseph, by the Holy Breath, is king. We people and angels with our earth and universe during our time and eternity are to be His kingdom, His holy family of friends, to the image and likeness of the Trinitarian Family of Friends. He gathers us his sheep who help our brothers and sisters in need, hungry and thirsty, homeless and naked, sick and imprisoned, bodily and spiritually. He is the king of the kingdom of us friends based on His truth and love. He is the Man, our human way, our merciful way. Entering His reign, He remembers us wrongdoers who have turned to Him to take us to His home (Mt 25, Jn 18, Lk 23).

Jesus is our one Lord who Is, who is the Merciful (Ex 3 and 34). He is our Lord as Child with His Father and His Holy Breath, the Trinitarian Family of Friends. He of Mary, wife of Joseph, in the fullness of time becomes our Brother and Companion and Savior, our Comrade and Champion and Revolutionary, our Friend. He is sent to us from His and our merciful Father to redeem us and He sends His and our Holy Breath from the Father in us to adopt us, His holy family of friends of Mary and Joseph, to the image and likeness of His Trinitarian Family of Friends (Gal 4). He guides us by the Holy Breath who speaks and gives what He hears and receives through Him our Jesus from the Father (Jn 3, Mt 28, Jn 16).

Jesus nourishes us, kindles us, converts us through the sacrament of His Body and Blood truly present, offered among and for and with us under the symbol of a word and bread and wine meal. He wants us to eat His Body handed over for us and drink His Blood poured out for us, to offer self for others with and like and through Him. In our hunger and thirst of heart and conscience and struggle, we need Him so that we may live radically and fully His way for us (Jn 6, Mk 14, Lk 9).

Jesus opens His Heart for us as our affectionate Friend and Savior. He, humble of heart, often rests and refreshes us who are laboring and burdened. He does this now during the time of our life and mission and forever in our eternity. He lets His Heart be pierced for us sinners. He searches and finds us lost sheep and carries us home (Mt 11, Jn 19, Lk 15).

Who is like our Jesus, our King, our Brother, Child of Mary and Joseph and our Lord with His Father and His Holy Breath? He offers himself for us. His Heart is open for us. He is the center of revelation and liturgy in our Church for our world (see the four constitutions of Vatican II). He is our hope and promise and fulfillment during our life and history, and for our eternity. He gathers and renews and sends us His family of friends and witnesses.

Jesus was at the center of my childhood and boyhood and youth in our parish and school, in my family and among my friends. He was at the center of my study of arts and sciences, of my practice of thought and expression both spoken and written and persuasion (logic, grammar, rhetoric), and of my three years of philosophy (1950-53 at the Gregorian): year one at the center of human imagining and knowing, method and content, truth and being (logic, epistemology, metaphysics); year two at the center of our earth and universe, of people and angels, of Him who Is (cosmology, psychology, natural theology); year three at the center of human feeling and willing, of us human persons and community and our attitudes and actions, religious and secular, of our concerns—domestic, cultural, economic, political (ethics).

Jesus was at the center of my theology before ordination (1953-57 at the Gregorian). In year one, He was the king of the kingdom (de revelatione, de ecclesia). In year two, He was the Child of the Father by the Holy Breath, the Beloved Word of the Lover by the Love, the Image of the Artist by the Gift, our Jesus of Mary and Joseph (de Trinitate). In year three, He was the Word Incarnate crucified and raised, our Anointed Savior, our heart, our friend (de Verbo Incarnato, de Christo Salvatore). In year four, He was the memorial word and bread and wine meal making Him truly present offering Himself among and for and with us brothers and sisters (de eucharistia).

Jesus is at the center of my eighty-seven years, of my sixty-five years as a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate (and of Joseph), of the fifty-nine years of my life and mission as a presbyter, a theologian and a parish priest. May He be at the center of my aging and death and eternity.

Please pray for and with me: Jesus of Mary and Joseph, thank you for your many blessings, especially my brothers and sisters, my friends, my family of friends. Forgive me my many sins, be merciful to me, a sinner. Help my ongoing conversion as your friend and witness.

Immaculate Conception ("DIME") statue at the University of St. Mary of the Lake via the USML website

St. Eugene, founder of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, died as the Salve Regina—the Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy—was prayed. Cardinal Francis George asked those present at his dying to sing this same hymn. The first Oblates leaving Marseilles, France, for the peoples of America, Asia, and Africa sang this same hymn as they watched the statue of Mary in Notre Dame de la Garde overlooking the harbor disappear to their ship moving out on the sea. In this hymn, we ask Mary, mother of mercy, that after this our exile she show us Jesus. We turn to her and her Joseph to pray for and with us to Jesus each day and especially at the hour of our death.

Dawn Eden Goldstein, S.T.D.

If all goes as designed now, my near future is to be an assistant parish priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mission, Texas. My heartfelt thanks to the wonderful people of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein Seminary. During my eighteen years in the church of Chicago, this has been a spiritual and intellectual and human oasis of brothers and sisters and friends. My heartfelt thanks to the seminarians and their fellow students, their teachers, and especially their staff of office and library and security and maintenance personnel. My heartfelt thanks to my sister and friend Dawn Eden Goldstein, who urged me to share my reflections on this blog and who made this possible with her expertise and generosity.

May Jesus and His Mary and His Joseph hold us all and each, singly and together, in their hands and mind and heart, now in our time and always in our eternity.

Father Don

Our Need, Our Holy Breath, Our Charisms

We need our merciful Father through His Child, our Jesus of Mary and Joseph, to breath anew His Breath in us brothers and sisters together and singly, to make us His family of friends to Their image and likeness. We need His Holy Breath and His charisms, our blessings directed to our brothers and sisters. We need His charisms of life/state and mission/office (ST II-II, qq. 83-89/Dei verbum, Sacrosanctum concilium), of thought and word and deed (ST II-II, qq. 71-78/Lumen gentium), of contemplation and action (ST II-II, qq. 179-182/Gaudium et spes).

The sixth and ninth commandments urge us to honor us brothers and sisters in our sexuality, virginity, marriage justly in thought, word, deed, to have caring hearts. The seventh and tenth commandments urge us to honor us brothers and sisters in our talent, work, property, justly in thought, word, deed, to have sharing hearts. Our sexuality is a basis of relating to others. Our talent is a basis of actions for others. Thomas, in speaking of our charisms, blessings directed to others, singles out among others office and state. State refers to our life in terms of our sexuality. Office refers to our mission in terms of our talent. Sexually we choose originally to be single, married/widowed, or consecrated/committed. Talentwise we choose originally to be lay or ordained. Pleasure can lure us not to care, possession can lure us not to share. We need Jesus, our source and exemplar, our way and truth and life. We need His shepherding and teaching and sanctifying. We need His offering word of revelation and His offering meal of liturgy to offer self for others in our relations and actions, our life and mission (DV and SC).

In addition to charisms of life and mission, we need charisms of thought, word, deed. We need charisms of thought, to hear the word of proclamation and promise of the Holy Breath, to feel His seizure and rapture. We need to speak words from His wisdom and knowledge and with His tongues of encounter. We need to do deeds under His impact, miraculously healing and nourishing and freeing and uniting and encouraging and cheering. We need these charisms in everyday ways and sometimes in more spectacular ways. We are a gathered and renewed and sent people, charismatic (democratic) and hierarchical (ordered). We are His family of friends because of His revealing and gracing action and of our responsive action trusting the Father and helping us brothers and sisters. We are ordained and lay, together and singly we are called to be holy, inspired by consecrated and apostolic members. We saints of earth and purgatory are to be totally His family of friends like and with the saints of heaven. We are exemplified, embodied, personified by Mary and Joseph. Jesus is the light of us nations of brothers and sisters as His holy family of friends of Mary and Joseph to the image and likeness of Him and His Father and His Holy Breath, His Trinitarian Family of Friends (LG). His Breath breaths, floods, blows, kindles, souls us together and singly through Him in His Church gathered and renewed and sent for His world.

Besides charisms of life/state and mission/office and of thought and word and deed, we need charisms of contemplation and action. Our contemplation is our prayer and our action is our virtue struggle. They interplay, each leading to the other. Together and singly we heartbeat with and like and through the Child of the Father, our Jesus of Mary and Joseph, through and in and toward His Catholic Church for His world. Together and singly we breathe by and in and with His Holy Breath. Together and singly we move from and to and for His and our Father the Merciful and us brothers and sisters, people and angels, with our earth and universe, during our time and eternity, the miserable in our heart and conscience and struggle to be His holy family of friends of Mary and Joseph to the image and likeness of Him and His Child and His Breath, His Trinitarian Family of Friends. Together and singly we move, breath, heartbeat as human and angelic persons and community in our action, religious and secular, ecclesial and civil. We do so in our married couples and families, in our schools and culture, in our work and property, in our government—local, national, regional, international—of both citizens and officials. We aim at life, liberty, and happiness, truth, justice, and mercy, pardon, peace, and beauty. Our contemplation and our action transform our world as the holy family of friends of Mary and Joseph in the light and fire of the Trinitarian Family of Friends.

So, our Holy Breath from our Father through His Child our Jesus of Mary and Joseph by His charisms directs our relations and actions of our life and mission through His offering word of revelation and offering meal of liturgy, guides our thoughts and words and deeds through His Church, gathered and renewed and sent, and blesses our contemplation and action transforming His world (the four constitutions of Vatican II). Like and unlike Karl Marx, we aim at a world to be interpreted and changed. Like and unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, we aim at the transvaluation of all values.

There is a description of the encounter between the deacon Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch that helps us grasp the way our Holy Breath guides our needed encounters with one another (Acts 8). He puts Philip in the carriage of the Ethiopian eunuch who thirsts for Jesus his Savior and after his evangelizing takes him away. Often He puts Philips in our carriage of us Ethiopian eunuchs in our need and then takes them away. Sometimes we are the Philips He puts in the carriages of our brothers and sisters the Ethiopian eunuchs in their need and then takes us away. This is really not an accidental happening but a providential action of our Holy Breath.

Our American poet Emily Dickinson observes, "Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell." Meeting one another, whether long or short, is central to our life and mission. Jesus promises we each and all have a place in the house of our Father and He will come to take us home by His Breath (John 14). Our same poet observes also, "I'm Nobody! ... Are you — Nobody — too? Then there's a pair of us! ... How dreary — to be — Somebody! ... To tell one's name — the livelong day — to an admiring Bog!" Jesus, humble of heart, by His Breath from His Father, rests and refreshes us laboring and burdened; this He does often now and will do forever for us His friends (Matthew 11).

Father Don

Our Need, Our Jesus the Messiah, Our Savior the Anointed

We need Jesus in his incarnation for our salvation as we confess and profess in the creed of our church. By the Holy Breath, He is the Child of the Father, our Jesus of the virgin Mary, wife of Joseph, for our salvation, especially through His passion and resurrection (Apostles Creed, Nicene-Constantinople Creed).

John Paul II was fascinated by the mystery of our redemption. Jesus is redeemer of us people (Redemptor hominis). His Mary is mother of our redeemer (Redemptoris mater). His Joseph is guardian of our redeemer (Redemptoris custos). Our mission is that of Him our redeemer (Redemptoris missio). Jesus our redeemer opens us to His merciful Father (Dives in misericordia) and to His life-giving Breath (Dominem et vivificantem). John Paul faced communism in Poland and in the world at large. He faced secularist humanism worldwide. He was concerned about the true liberation of us people, our true redemption. For him, liberation theology is truly redemption theology.

John Paul highlighted the church in the contemporary world and religious freedom. During the council, he was deeply involved in Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae. Jesus is our way to be truly free human persons in community today (GS no. 22 and 24, DH no. 2-3 and 10-11). His Breath from His Father touches us together and singly to realize we are to be freely His children and so brothers and sisters among ourselves as His family of friends of Mary and Joseph.

Jesus is our captain in the battle of life and history. He is our comrade, our champion, our revolutionary. He makes us humbly trustful in His and our merciful Father and mercifully helpful to His brothers and sisters miserable in our heart and conscience and struggle. Especially through His passion and resurrection, His defeat and victory, He transforms our movement and flow from cruel to merciful. Mary and Joseph are His closest friends in His turning us from the isolation of enemies to His family of friends humbly trustful and mercifully helpful.

Thomas considers our redemption as an aspect of our salvation. Jesus saves us especially through His passion as merit of our good and as satisfaction of our evil and as sacrifice offering self for His Father and us His brothers and sisters and as redemption changing the movement and flow of our history and lives from cruel to merciful. Especially through His passion and resurrection, He saves us as sacrament revealing and gracing our lives and history (ST III, qq. 48, 49, 56).

Jesus our Savior is our wounded heart, our affection, our fire. He makes us His family of friends of Mary and Joseph (John 19, Haurietis aquas and Munificentissimus Deus of Pius XII). He walks with us, talks with us, breaks bread with us, missions us (Luke 24, Deus caritas est, Verbum Domini, Sacramentum caritatis of Benedict XVI, and Evangelii gaudium of Francis). Jesus is our good Samaritan (Luke 10), He sets us on fire (Luke 12). He is merciful friend to us cruel brothers and sisters and wants to make us His merciful family of friends of Mary and Joseph to the image and likeness of Him Child, Beloved Word, and His Father, His Lover, and His Breath, His Love.

Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well by Nicholas Columbel, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jesus changes our water to wine (John 2). He is our way and truth and life (John 14). We thirst, He gives us water from His well (John 4). We are blinded, He makes us see (John 9). We are deadened, He makes us live (John 11). He is the grain of wheat that dies to make us His field of wheat (John 12). He is the vine, we the branches to bear His grapes (John 15). He, humble of heart, rests and refreshes us (Matthew 11). He holds us in His heart and hands as His friends, His family of friends. By His Breath, He makes us His heart and His hands, offering self among and for and with us to His Father and helping His brothers and sisters (Chrism Mass homily of Benedict XVI, 2006).

Jesus is our need, our story, our song. Our Jesus the Messiah, our Savior the Anointed, yesterday, today, tomorrow, is forever (Hebrews 13).

Father Don

The Church Year, the Rosary, Our Life and Mission

The church year (Sundays, weekdays, saintsdays) tones and colors our life and mission. It is centered on Jesus, Child of Mary and Joseph, the Child of our Merciful Father and His Holy Breath. It is centered on Jesus of the gospels in His incarnation for us (advent, christmas, epiphany) and in His redemption of us (lent, easter, pentecost), in His words and deeds after His baptism and temptation to before His last supper and agony (ordinary time). This we pray in the rosary with the joyful, the luminous, the sorrowful and the glorious mysteries of Jesus and of us His followers.

We can pray the life and mission of a brother, of a sister, of a friend, dead or still alive on earth, in the light and fire of the mysteries of Jesus in the church year and in the rosary. We can pray the history of the church and our world the same way.

We pray the conception, the gestation, the birth of Jesus of Mary wife of Joseph, we pray His traditioning as child in the presentation and his creativity as youth in the finding (the joyful mysteries). We pray His call in the river and the desert; His words, especially in His talks such as the sermon on the mount; His deeds, especially in His meals such as the wedding at Cana; His opposition in Galilee with the transfiguration; His rejection in Jerusalem with the triumphal entry (the luminous mysteries). We pray His last supper with the washing of feet and the offering of Self in transformed bread and wine; His passion from the agony in the garden to His last breath on the cross; His raising and breathing His breath from His Father in his friends; His ascension and blowing and kindling His Wind His Fire in His friends past present future; His family of friends forever, personified by the wife of Joseph, His mother Mary, taken by Him bodily to heaven (the sorrowful and the glorious mysteries). This is my personal way of praying the rosary each day with fifteen mysteries.

Jesus, present in His church for His world, is celebrated during the church year and weekdays and saintsdays mainly in the memorial word and bread and wine meal of Him truly present offering His body and blood among and for and with us to be heard and offered and eaten/drunk and approached by us. Likewise, He is celebrated in the prayer of hours, psalms in His light and fire for us in our everyday need of heart and conscience and struggle at anticipated midnight readings, morning, midday, noon, midafternoon, evening, night.

The Basilica of St. John Lateran (originally Saint Saviour) in Rome.
Photo by Jastrow via Wikimedia Commons.

Jesus, present in His church for His world, is celebrated in our life and history with sacraments and sacramentals. There is our birthing at baptism; our firming at confirmation, our nourishing and converting and illumining and kindling and impelling at the eucharist; our being forgiven of our sins with reconciliation; our being strengthened in our serious bodily illness with the anointing of the sick; the ordaining of a man to be a priestly servant for the priestly people as bishop or presbyter (both as priests) or deacon (as servant); the marrying of a man and a woman as coupled friends open to giving life to their child. Besides the sacraments, there are sacramentals. Sacraments are actions of Jesus through His church; sacramentals are actions of the church as her prayer to Jesus.

The great sacramentals are the consecrating of a man/woman as a virgin or the committing of a man/woman as an apostle; the burial of the bodily remains of a human person after death for final resurrection; the dedication of a house to be a home for the gathered and sent followers of Jesus. Other than these great sacramentals, there are those for our yearly passover conversion: ashes, branches, oils (of sick, of catechumens, chrism)—cross, candle/candles, water. There are many other sacramentals, blessings of people and things for different and myriad occasions and concerns.

No wonder we treat the church of Jesus as our mother and teacher of us His followers together and singly in our life and mission as his followers together and singly.

Father Don

The Way of the Risen Jesus and His Followers

"Florida Sunrise" by James E.K. via Wikipedia.

We followers of Jesus follow Him the Crucified His way. And we follow Him the Risen His way. He is crucified by us but raised by His Holy Spirit from His Father. We mark fourteen stops to deepen our dying to our sinful self and rising to our graced self.

(1) Jesus rises from the dead at sunrise the third day after His crucifixion and burial. (2) He empties the tomb where His dead body lay. His body is not found in the tomb by Mary Magdalene and by the women nor by the apostles Peter and John. The angel tells them Jesus has been raised up from the dead. (3) Jesus appears to His Mother and friend Mary in communion with His friends alive and dead, especially Joseph. (4) He appears to Mary Magdalene and to Peter individually in the garden near the tomb. (5) He appears to the two disciples on the road and in the inn. Their hearts burn as He walks and talks and breaks bread with them. (6) On this third day of His passover and first day of His resurrection, He appears to the ten apostles in the upper room of the last supper. He breathes His Holy Breath from His Father in them to mercy their brothers and sisters in their sinful misery. (7) On the eighth day of His resurrection, He appears to the eleven apostles in the upper room; this time Thomas, who has doubted, is present and now believes because he has seen and heard and touched Jesus.

Campfire via Wikipedia.

(8) Days later, Jesus appears to the seven disciples at the lake. He missions Peter to care for His lambs and sheep out of love for Him. (9) Forty days after the resurrection, He appears to the eleven apostles on the mountain. Then Jesus missions them to evangelize and sacramentalize their brothers and sisters from all the nations; He pledges to be with them to the end of time. (10) Jesus ascends in their presence to His Father by His Cloud, His Holy Breath, and continues to help His followers from the side of His Father by His Holy Breath. (11) During nine days, the 120 disciples, including Mary His Mother and some extended family members, and including Peter and the other apostles, pray in the upper room for His Holy Breath from His Father. (12) Fifty days after His resurrection and ten days after His ascension, Jesus from His Father breathes His Holy Breath in the 120 disciples. (13) His Holy Breath is Water filling them, Wind blowing them, Fire kindling them, Soul animating them together and singly, each original for and with all and each, making them His Body and Him their Head.

(14) So the story of Jesus and His Church, His gathered and sent followers, unfolds through history (gospels of Jesus, acts and letters of apostles, revelation). People belong to Him inwardly by His graced faith and hope and love and justice in their heart and life and mission, and outwardly relating to Him our Way and Truth and Life through His shepherding and teaching and sanctifying in His Church for His world by our graced good will, human and secular and hopefully as religious, as Christian, as Catholic. Jesus crucified and raised calls us His way during our life and history to be His family of friends of Mary and Joseph to the image and likeness of Him Child of theirs and of His Father by His Holy Breath.

The last supper, the passion, and the resurrection of Jesus is our passover, our liberation. The coming of His Holy Breath from His Father is our covenant, our communion. The last supper is now the passover and covenant meal offering of Jesus and of us His friends, especially Mary and Joseph.

Popular prayer in the Church by the Holy Breath inspires our prayer together and singly: 

Abba, Father, we are His children, His friends, His family of friends. Alleluia, praise the Lord. Take my freedom, receive my imagining, knowing, willing. Only give me your love and grace, that is enough, nothing more. Soul of Jesus, Body of Jesus, hide me in Your wounds, never let me be separated from You. Mary, Mother of Mercy, after this our exile, show us your Child, our Jesus. Together with Joseph, pray for and with us to your and our Jesus now and at the hour of our death. By the Holy Breath in the Church. Amen, let it be so.

We together and singly are deeply involved in the struggles of our Church and of the nation and world. We have our concerns and our hopes and dreams. With the help of Jesus, we do our best and entrust all to Him. His and our Church and nation and world are in His heart and mind and hands.

Father Don

The Way of the Crucified Jesus and His Followers

Pieta by Michelangelo. Photo by Juan M. Romero via Wikimedia Commons.

During Lent, we practice more often the popular devotions of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary and of the Way of the Cross. We want to follow Jesus in His sorrows and in His way of His cross to His resurrection. This latter devotion involves some traditional fourteen stops that deepen our dying to our sinful self and rising to our graced self.

(1) We start with Jesus being judged religiously by the Jewish high priest and secularly by the Roman governor and condemned to be crucified. (2) Then He shoulders the cross for the walk to the hill of crucifixion. (3) He falls the first time, bruised by people like us who are not loyal in our faith and obedience. (4) He is met and encouraged by His mother and friend Mary, and through her in the communion of saints by His father and friend Joseph. (5) He is helped by the man Simon, who also shoulders His cross. (6) He is helped by the woman Veronica, who dries His face. (7) He falls the second time, bruised by people like us, who are not modest in our hope and poverty.

(8) Jesus encounters some weeping women of Jerusalem and urges them to their and their families' conversion. (9) He falls the third time, bruised by people like us, who are not truly affectionate in our love and chastity. (10) He is stripped of His clothing by people like us, who are not childlike in our humility and cheerfulness. (11) He is nailed to the cross by people like us, who are not honest in our justice and perseverance.

(12) Jesus burns out on the cross, dying for us His enemies and friends. He prays for our forgiveness, He promises us His everlasting home, He entrusts us together and singly to His mother and her to us. He experiences our abandonment from His Father because of our sins and yet trusts Him completely and loves Him wholeheartedly and us mercifully. He thirsts for us, His brothers and sisters, to be His family of friends. He completes His life and mission by His Holy Breath for His Father and for us. He hands over His Holy Breath to us, His brothers and sisters, to make us His family of friends.

(13) Jesus' dead body is held truly affectionately by Mary. (14) His dead body is buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple belonging to the Jewish ruling council, only to rise on the third day to breathe and blow and kindle us with His Holy Breath, His Wind and Fire, from His Father. So He makes us together and singly, each original for and with all and each, people and angels with our earth and universe during our time and eternity His family of friends of Joseph and Mary in His Church for His world, to the image and likeness of Him Child and His Father and His Holy Breath.

We pray for the concerns of the successor of Peter about the Church and the world. We hope with the help of the prayer of the Church to Jesus (indulgence) to overthrow the impact, psychological and social, of our past sins. We sorrow for our sins because we fear to be separated from our friend Jesus, because we hope to be joined closely to Him our Friend, and mostly because we fail to love Him our faithful Friend and Companion and Savior, our Brother and Lord, our Comrade and Champion and Revolutionary, freeing and uniting us to be His family of friends.

The last supper, the passion, and the resurrection of Jesus is our passover, our liberation. The coming of His Holy Breath from His Father is our covenant, our communion. The last supper is now the passover and covenant meal offering of Jesus and of us His friends, especially Mary and Joseph.

Father Don

OMIs, 200 Years: 1816-2016

This January 25, 2016, we shall celebrate the 200th birthday of the missionary oblates of Mary Immaculate. We started January 25, 1816, the conversion of Paul, met by Jesus on the road to Damascus and changed from His enemy and persecutor to His friend and apostle, in a former Carmelite convent vacated during the French revolution at Aix en Provence in southeastern France. We have been preparing for this event the last three years: 2013 with reflection on love-chastity-community, 2014 with reflection on hope—poverty, perseverance—formation, government, 2015 with reflection on faith and justice-obedience-mission. This event comes toward the end of the year of consecrated life, November 30, 2014 to February 2, 2016 and toward the beginning of the year of mercy, December 8, 2015 to November 20, 2016, both called by pope Francis.

In his apostolic letter marking the start of the year of consecrated life, pope Francis listed its aims: remembering our past thankfully, living our present passionately, embracing our future hopefully. Personally this means remembering thankfully people and places and times that touch me deeply. There is our founder, a young priest later to be bishop of Marseilles, France, St. Eugene de Mazenod, beatified by pope Paul VI mission Sunday, 1975, and canonized by John Paul II first advent Sunday and memorial of St. Francis Xavier, December 3, 1995, merciful good shepherd to the miserable (Luke 10). There are our blessed: Joseph Gerard, French missionary to South Africa; Joseph Cebula, Polish martyr at a Nazi concentration camp; twenty-two Spanish martyrs, mostly seminarians, during the recent civil war.

Closer to home, there are Charles Pandosy, French missionary to the Walla Walla diocese in the Oregon territory that is now Washington state (1847 arrival); Peter Perisot, French missionary, member of the Cavalry of Christ (he is reported to have read St. Thomas while resting on the trail) along what is now the border of Mexico from Brownsville through Mission to Roma (1849 arrival); Edwin Guild, farmboy from southern Illinois, who as a priest created the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, a man of humble devotion to Mary; and John Maronic from Minnesota, who started a movement for people specially abled, the Victorious Missionaries. There are special places like St. Joseph Mission, Atanum, in the Yakima diocese; La Lomita, a chapel of Mary at Mission on the oblate horseback trail in the Brownsville diocese; the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in her prayer for everyday people in their needs and wants at Belleville city and diocese.

Ahtanum. Photo via UW Special Collections.

La Lomita. Photo by Onleal91 via Wikimedia Commons.

La Lomita interior. Photo by Onleal91 via Wikimedia Commons.

There are oblate teachers like Pat Fennessy from Chicago who encouraged me in speaking and writing and playing basketball, like Boni Wittenbrink who communicated a broad vision of the church and the world, oblate leaders like John Walsh from Chicago who approached difficult community situations from the heart. There are my former oblate fellow novices like deceased Gerry Fuller, classmate from first grade on, poet and preacher, singer and writer, clown and advocate of the poor; Tom O'Brien, humble energetic missionary to the poor in Brazil; Paul Wightman, shepherd to Ozark people and cave explorer enthusiast; Bill Woestman, from novitiate to the present, now church lawyer and scholar and author, caring deeply about people in difficulty.

Our novitiate class, 1949-50. Above, a break in apple-picking. Below, the prayer of the hours.

The young Fr. Francis George OMI

There are oblate bishops like John Taylor, one of our liberal arts teachers who became bishop of Stockholm, Sweden, highly gifted and ever loyal to the church; Francis George, one of our theology and philosophy students, who became bishop of Yakima, then of Portland, then of Chicago,  intellectual and pastoral giant with delighted laughter at the funny side of life, acclaimed by those of different views such as John Allen (who judged that, with the possible exception of Joseph Ratzinger, Francis was his most intellectually penetrating interview subject) and George Weigel (who judged that, of our fourteen hundred successors of bishop John Carroll, there was none more insightful into church and America than Francis). There are former oblate student seminarians like Ed Figueroa, unconquerable tireless champion of poor children and youth in Recife, Brazil; like Roy Snipes, our last Texas cowboy, a magnet of youth, first at Roma and now at Mission, blessed with the everyday poetic sense of his father and mother; like deceased Bob Olson, on fire to bring Jesus in his Catholic church to the people of Sweden.

Finally, there are those who were among us oblates but moved on before novitiate like Terry O'Donnel and Dan Donahue, before first oblation like my brother Jack Dietz husband father grandfather great-grandfather, before oblation for life like Tim Hoban and Dave Caravello, before ordination to priesthood like Steve Bulvanoski, after ordination to priesthood like Jim Relihan, but who moved back like Matt Menger who embodies the best of Texas. And most of all there are the people young and old and in between, boys and girls, men and women, each original for and with all and each, that we oblates are blessed to serve who evangelize us so profoundly as we evangelize them.

These and many other oblate heroes ordinarily unsung, brothers and sisters and companions and friends, of Africa and Asia and Oceania and Europe and America (south, central, north), past, present, future, and their places and times are a blessing that makes me thankful, passionate, hopeful, heading to age eighty-seven and now for sixty-five years and still going, though not so strong, a missionary oblate of Mary Immaculate (and of St. Joseph).

Father Don