THE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF January 21, 2008...
Provincial’s time With a heavy heart (the Packers lost their playoff game), Fr. Cassidy returns to Milwaukee on Tuesday. Next week, he has council meetings Monday and Tuesday (held at the formation house in Chicago) and then it’s off to Pinellas Park, January 31 – February 7. Update Fr. Pat Lloyd has a new e-mail address: plloyd36a@hotmail.com Fr. Jerome Clifford also has a new home in cyberspace: jrcscj@sbcglobal.net Vocations the responsibility of all Fr. Thi Pham is unpacking and finding his way around the vocation office. As you may remember, he replaced Fr. Yvon Sheehy as director of vocations as of January 1. Fr. Yvon is now pastor of St. Martin of Tours parish. Vocation Awareness Week (January 13-19) seemed like a good time to catch up with Fr. Thi and ask him about his new job: “When Fr. Tom Cassidy asked me to consider taking the vocation director’s job, I was ‘shocked and overwhelmed,’” he said. “I had been ordained for less than a year and was just getting into the parish routine, but I said ‘Yes’ to the provincial even though I am not sure what direction that ‘yes’ will take me. I believe that this ministry will give me the opportunity to serve the Church as a whole as well as my community.” When Fr. Tom first talked to Fr. Thi about vocation ministry, Fr. Thi said that the “image that first came to my mind was the call of Jesus to his first disciples: Peter, James, and John. They were fishermen and they were able to let go of everything to respond to Jesus’ call. I hope that like those first disciples, I can let go of everything and say ‘yes’ to the needs of the province.” Fr. Thi continued, saying that he hopes that others join him in saying “yes.” “Promoting vocations is the responsibility of every baptized Christian, we all must say ‘yes’ to promoting vocations. The job of vocations does not depend on any one person, but on all of us –– all SCJs and the entire Church. If we are truly disciples of Jesus, we are called to bring the Good News to the world by our words and actions. “I urge each SCJ to think about the future of the Church and the community; I urge each person to say ‘yes’ to promoting vocations.” SHCC conference Sacred Heart Communities in Collaboration (SHCC) is hosting its bi-annual conference July 11-13 at the Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Marriottsville, MD. For information on the center go to: http://www.bonsecours.org/bssc/ The theme of this year’s conference is “Jesus, the Reconciling Healer: Calling Us to Harmony.” Speakers will focus on topics that deal with “harmony with self, community and mankind,” wrote organizers. Presenters will include Fr. William J. Jarema, SMM, founder and program director of the Mercy Center for Healing the Whole Person located in Colorado Springs, Co.; Margaret Silf, a spiritual writer based in England; and Fr. David P. Reid, SS.CC, a professor of Sacred Scripture at the Washington Theological Union who is publishing a book on devotion to the Sacred Heart in light of contemporary Biblical studies and popular religiosity. The fee for the full conference, including lodging, is $350. You can also sign up per day without lodging. For more information contact Br. Brian Guerrini, SS.CC at 1111 Roselawn Ave., Artesia, NM 88210. You can also get a copy of the registration form by contacting Lisa Brahm at the Provincialate, 414-427-4261 or e-mail her at: provadm@poshusa.org. New Year’s greetings Bishop Evert Baay wrote to the province via Fr. Tom Cassidy to share his greetings for the new year. “Here in South Africa, December and January are the summer holiday months. Before Christmas are the social parties, and by now we have had the biggest share of them. After Christmas, sisters from all over come to us to spend a couple of weeks at the resort of Schoenmakerskop. I try to provide a bit of a religious atmosphere to these weeks of relaxation. I always feel that a holiday can have as good or better effects than a retreat… “During the coming year I shall have been a chaplain to the Sisters of Nazareth for 20 years. It has been an ideal job after 25 years in the Karoo and six years of recuperation in Natal… “May you and all of the members of the province receive God’s special blessings during the new year!” A man remembered Today, January 21, is Dr. Martin Luther King Day. Some of the many quotes attributed to him: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” “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.”