Letter from
Bulletin of August 25, 2002

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THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


Dear Parishioners,

This week our parish school reopens; that with next weekend’s observance of Labor Day usually draws a final curtain on summer – vacation – and leisure time. This particular summer has not afforded me much leisure (I hope it was better for you); and beyond that I tend to always keep my motor running at a fast pace, sometimes wondering whether it’s my passion for ministry or old fashioned workaholism. Anyway, I don’t think I’m a great candidate to talk about the importance and value of leisure, but a highly respect theologian, Fr. James Keenan S.J., has-so I’d like to share a couple of his thoughts. He begins by describing his early spiritual life at the hands of America – Irish Jesuits as bare, silent, solo and in chapels bleak and undecorated. He dubbed it “Irish Gothic” spirituality. He goes on to tell of his journey for studies in Florence and Rome with his first encounter with the highly decorated baroque churches filled with colors, movement and passion. He writes: “I loved baroque art immediately. I felt connected with another type of spirituality: far more active, colorful, embodied, forgiving, celebratory . . . finding God in all God’s creation. I felt liberated from Irish Gothic.” He goes on to say that now his prayers like his leisure is baroque; and that a true experience of leisure gives an experience of God’s kingdom. He writes:

“I now believe that leisure is about tasting the kingdom of heaven. It has taken me a long time to learn that. As a child I was never attracted to the kingdom. The ‘beatific vision’ sounded pretty boring. Eternity, contemplating God. Phew! But when I read Thomas Aquinas during my studies in Rome, I learned that Heaven, or patria as he called it, was pure act. I was freed again from all those sedentary, subduing images that anchored others but harnessed me. Since then in my leisure, I look all around me for the kingdom . . .

Like my morning run, my best leisure is with others. When I am alone I do good work, but when it comes to leisure I want my friends. I want to hear about their lives, how they are doing, what they are planning, when I will see them next. I want to go to films with them, walk along the river, eat in a restaurant. And I want music in the background.”

He closed by describing a light evening supper with good friends, a beautiful view and guitar music in the background, and he concludes: “This is what heaven will be like I thought: God’s love, human gratitude and friendship, beauty, truth, and joy.”

Your Pastor,
Brian Joyce


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THE LIVING SPIRIT
“Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve,
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labor and not to ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that I do your will.”

St. Ignatius of Loyola
Prayer for Generosity



“Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women-for-others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ—for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.”

Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Men and Women for Others”, 1973



“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nobel Prize Speech, 1964



“It is always a terrible thing to come back to Mott Street. To come back in a driving rain to men crouched on the stairs, huddled in doorways, without overcoats because they sold them, perhaps the week before when it was warm, to satisfy hunger or thirst, who knows. Those without love would say, “It serves them right, drinking up their clothes.” God help us if we got just what we deserved.”

Dorothy Day
On Pilgrimage
(Eerdmans, 1999)