SAY IT AIN'T SO
Yesterday when I woke up I had to get my head around three huge stories:
DUKE ALMOST LOST THEIR GAME AGAINST CENTRAL FLORIDA.
GRONK QUIT FOOTBALL
KYRIE IS PROBABLY ON HIS WAY OUT OF BOSTON.
That is a lot to absorb in one morning. I got through it with the help of my daily dose of Sports info on GET UP.
I have since been comforted by learning that I tied with another person in our pool by getting the most games right in the first round. So I won a small monetary prize. And I will probably not win another because my brackets got busted badly in ROUND TWO.
Now I hear there is a guy out in Columbus OHIO who still has a perfect bracket. Check it out on NCAA Brackets and you will read his story.
No one has ever had a perfect bracket and it is a mathematical extreme case.
But someone in OHIO is on his way. GO BUCKEYES.
The game between DUKE and Central Florida was thrilling and should have ended differently. A foul was not called properly in the last few minutes and would have gone against Duke. It was a rare chance to see the Duke Star Zion against the Central Florida 7 feet 6 inch Wonder who does not even have to jump to get a dunk. The game put on display Zion's lack of shooting skills and made it look as if he has astounded us with his massive physicality and his immense personal energy. Both of which make him vulnerable. Zion could benefit from another year at Duke under the tutelage of COACH K.
I am glad that GRONK is leaving the Football field while he can still walk and talk pretty sensibly. I have always enjoyed his good humor caught as he is in a ridiculously sour and grim organization.
Some are saying that the GRONK Story is to distract us from the KRAFT story. But I am OK with that and grateful for any distraction from the woes of the privileged.
Gronk brought an element or reality and fun to the proceedings at Gillette. I had with many others noticed his slowed running in the past season, and I felt for him every painful lunge and fall.
Imagine how much more fun he would have had playing with a quarterback like Aaron Rogers, I hope he enjoys his retirement.
PLEASE DON'T ENTER THE WRESTLING WORLD !
Kyrie is going to take another rest day. I guess it is wearying to see a team blow an enormous point advantage night after night.
But Kyrie does not know what to say that is not just finger-pointing. He never sees his own part in the drama. He has his lines down perfectly, but he does not see that he could talk different and be different. When he is doing his thing, no one handles a ball better and his moves can still astound us. But he lacks insight and his sense of the value of others is very limited.
TOO BAD AND TOO SAD. MY CELTICS DESERVE BETTER.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Friday, March 22, 2019
MARCH MADNESS MARCHES ON IN THE BUCKET
WE ARE DEEP IN THE MADNESS NOW
Sixteen games were played yesterday and the eight losing teams have already retired from the field. Yash made some great picks--out of the sixteen he chose fifteen correctly. But the sixteenth was a killer. Yash chose Syracuse over Baylor--come to think of it so did I. This morning we reviewed the carnage while watching GET UP on TV. I explained to Yash that he did not just have one game wrong; he now has a doomed bracket.
WHY? Because he has Syracuse as one of the FINAL FOUR.
Why, I asked him did you take Syracuse so far?
He answered with ONE WORD--LOYALTY.
Why does he still feel so loyal to Syracuse? Because Syracuse did not charge application fees--applying from India, he could only afford to apply to colleges with no fees. Syracuse accepted him and gave him a full fellowship with no teaching and included room and board. Syracuse accepted his hand-written term papers. And when he showed up in Syracuse looking forward to a Syracuse winter, he had no overcoat. Other foreign students took him to a Salvation army and he picked out a warm coat.
So his brackets fell with Syracuse.
Now we are watching the Cincinnati-Iowa match up. WE both picked Cincy to win.
WHY. Same answer --LOYALTY.
I taught there for almost 30 years and Yash came back from India to make the move to the mid-west with me. As soon as they met him, senior faculty members said :
Don't worry. He is so distinguished, he will soon have a job here.
And after I gained tenure at UC, they gave him a steady adjunct appointment.
Back to reality--Cincinnati managed to lose the game in the last five minutes. They seem to be jinxed and get eliminated in their first game in the dance. I felt sorry for the weeping players gathered around their coach at the close with their shirts drawn up over their heads weeping into those shirts.
Well so far Loyalty has take us to defeat twice.
But we have a third LOYALTY choice--DUKE.
We have them in the Final Four and one of us has Duke taking all.
Let's see how that works out.
Sixteen games were played yesterday and the eight losing teams have already retired from the field. Yash made some great picks--out of the sixteen he chose fifteen correctly. But the sixteenth was a killer. Yash chose Syracuse over Baylor--come to think of it so did I. This morning we reviewed the carnage while watching GET UP on TV. I explained to Yash that he did not just have one game wrong; he now has a doomed bracket.
WHY? Because he has Syracuse as one of the FINAL FOUR.
Why, I asked him did you take Syracuse so far?
He answered with ONE WORD--LOYALTY.
Why does he still feel so loyal to Syracuse? Because Syracuse did not charge application fees--applying from India, he could only afford to apply to colleges with no fees. Syracuse accepted him and gave him a full fellowship with no teaching and included room and board. Syracuse accepted his hand-written term papers. And when he showed up in Syracuse looking forward to a Syracuse winter, he had no overcoat. Other foreign students took him to a Salvation army and he picked out a warm coat.
So his brackets fell with Syracuse.
Now we are watching the Cincinnati-Iowa match up. WE both picked Cincy to win.
WHY. Same answer --LOYALTY.
I taught there for almost 30 years and Yash came back from India to make the move to the mid-west with me. As soon as they met him, senior faculty members said :
Don't worry. He is so distinguished, he will soon have a job here.
And after I gained tenure at UC, they gave him a steady adjunct appointment.
Back to reality--Cincinnati managed to lose the game in the last five minutes. They seem to be jinxed and get eliminated in their first game in the dance. I felt sorry for the weeping players gathered around their coach at the close with their shirts drawn up over their heads weeping into those shirts.
Well so far Loyalty has take us to defeat twice.
But we have a third LOYALTY choice--DUKE.
We have them in the Final Four and one of us has Duke taking all.
Let's see how that works out.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
BRACKETOLOGY IN THE BUCKET
Time to change up and get our choices in for MARCH MADNESS.
HERE WE ARE WELCOMING THE SPRING EQUINOX--equal time of light and dark.
I recently read something written by someone who had spent many years helping the poor. She said that the poor taught her to celebrate life because they celebrate life. There is so much truth there. The poor and certainly those who are sick and suffering come to appreciate the preciousness of life.
I saw some of that joy this noontime when I went to bring my MARCH MADNESS brackets to our friend who runs THE BASKETBALL pool. We stopped at the LaSalle Bakery, and I sent Yash in to get two zeppoles for me and him and two for my friend and her husband, The bakery was crowded and since it also serves lunches it was also packed by people on their lunch time.
As I waited in the car I began noticing the hundreds of children playing outside at a school across from the Bakery. They seemed so lively and exuberant. I noticed that they were running excitedly to a corner of the school yard nearest to me. Looking more closely, I saw what the attraction was--three children were doing cartwheels. They were able to do several in a row and they were thrilling their schoolmates.
I felt their exuberance and pure youthful energy. It was lively and charming. They were moving with the joy of movement. They were celebrating their own youth and energy. They were totally caught up in the joy of the moment.
AS time passes and we age, I would like to move more towards CELEBRATION.This is the moment as the old ELVIS song reminds us IT'S NOW OR NEVER
HERE WE ARE WELCOMING THE SPRING EQUINOX--equal time of light and dark.
I recently read something written by someone who had spent many years helping the poor. She said that the poor taught her to celebrate life because they celebrate life. There is so much truth there. The poor and certainly those who are sick and suffering come to appreciate the preciousness of life.
I saw some of that joy this noontime when I went to bring my MARCH MADNESS brackets to our friend who runs THE BASKETBALL pool. We stopped at the LaSalle Bakery, and I sent Yash in to get two zeppoles for me and him and two for my friend and her husband, The bakery was crowded and since it also serves lunches it was also packed by people on their lunch time.
As I waited in the car I began noticing the hundreds of children playing outside at a school across from the Bakery. They seemed so lively and exuberant. I noticed that they were running excitedly to a corner of the school yard nearest to me. Looking more closely, I saw what the attraction was--three children were doing cartwheels. They were able to do several in a row and they were thrilling their schoolmates.
I felt their exuberance and pure youthful energy. It was lively and charming. They were moving with the joy of movement. They were celebrating their own youth and energy. They were totally caught up in the joy of the moment.
AS time passes and we age, I would like to move more towards CELEBRATION.This is the moment as the old ELVIS song reminds us IT'S NOW OR NEVER
Monday, March 18, 2019
Saint Joseph's Saint Andre Bessette lived and worked in RI
I decided to bring home the contemporary significance of Saint Joseph by looking at the way Saint Joseph responded to the special devotion of Saint Andre Bessette.
SPECIAL DEVOTION TO SAINT JOSEPH AND MANY MIRACLES IN HIS NAME
I have asked many times what saints have lived or visited RI. Saint Brother Andre Bessette did not merely pass through Rhode Island, he worked for years in the Phoenix Mills in West Warwick before he returned to Quebec to take up his religious vocation. There his great devotion to Saint Joseph was rewarded with many miracles of healing. Brother Bessette created a special oil out of candles that had burned in the Saint Joseph chapel and he used the oil to give to the sick and lame to rub on their bodies.
Andre Bessette considered Saint Joseph a neglected Saint and he devoted his life to bringing the husband of Mary and foster-father of Jesus back into the center of family life and devotion.
Blessed Andre Bessette, who once worked in the former Phoenix Mill located in West Warwick, canonized by Pope Benedict XVI.. Several healing miracles have been attributed to the Quebec native, who died in 1937 and who has still has many distant relatives living in Rhode Island.
SPECIAL DEVOTION TO SAINT JOSEPH AND MANY MIRACLES IN HIS NAME
Blessed Andre Bessette, who once worked in the former Phoenix Mill located in West Warwick, canonized by Pope Benedict XVI.. Several healing miracles have been attributed to the Quebec native, who died in 1937 and who has still has many distant relatives living in Rhode Island.
When Bessete was 20, he joined many young Quebecois, including several of his brothers and sisters, who sought work in New England’s thriving textile mills. He returned to his homeland in 1867, following the establishment of the Canadian Federation. Despite frail health and a lack of formal education, the young man was presented to the Congregation of the Holy Cross in Montreal by his parish pastor, Father Andre Provencal, who noticed the young man’s piety and devotion. Bessette was accepted into the novitiate and given the name Brother Andre.
For more than 40 years Brother Andre served as a porter at Notre Dame College, administered by the Holy Cross Congregation, and performed other jobs for the religious community, such as giving haircuts to the students attending the school.
The young brother had great confidence in St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, and recommended this devotion to all those who sought his counsel, many of whom suffered from physical or mental afflictions or needed spiritual encouragement. Because he wanted St. Joseph to be honored, Brother Andre began construction of a small chapel near the school on Mount Royal in 1904.
As his reputation spread, throngs of pilgrims visited the chapel and met with Brother Andre and soon proclaimed that they were cured of their illnesses. Historians report that the brother made oil from the remnants of church candles, bottled the substance and encouraged those whom he met to rub the oil on their bodies as they prayed to St. Joseph for healing.
Eventually the small chapel could not accommodate the vast number of pilgrims who came to meet Brother Andre and to pray with him. St. Joseph’s Oratory was built and remains a popular destination for those who travel to Montreal to seek St. Joseph’s and Blessed Andre’s intercession.
Throughout his life, Brother Andre visited relatives and friends throughout Rhode Island and in Fall River, Mass, where he frequently worshiped at St. Anne’s Shrine, then operated by the Dominican Fathers from the Canadian province who ministered to the French- speaking communicants who had settled in the area and worked in the city’s textile mills..”
Bishop Louis E. Gelineau who grew up in Burlington, Vt., recalled that when he was a young boy, his parents, who were very religious, traveled to Montreal to visit Brother Andre.
“They felt that they were in the presence of a saint.” Bishop Gelineau said. “I remember their excitement.”
Julien Bessette, a distant cousin of the future saint and parishioner of Precious Blood Church, Woonsocket, recalled that two of his uncles had met Brother Andre when they were teens.
“My grandmother told them, “You’re seeing a saint,’” Bessette recalled. “Brother Andre was known as “‘The Miracle Man of Montreal.’”
Prayer to Saint André for Healing
Saint André,
I come to you in prayer for healing.
(state your intention)
You were no stranger to illness.
Plagued by stomach problems,
you knew suffering on a daily basis,
but you never lost faith in God.
Thousands of people have sought your healing touch
as I do today.
Pray that I might be restored to health
in body, soul and mind.
With St. Joseph as my loving Protector,
strengthen my faith and give me peace
that I might accept God’s will for me
no matter what the outcome.
Amen.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PATRICK
ALL PRAISE TO SAINT PATRICK
I decided to honor the Great saint's special day by looking up and reporting Saint Patrick's actual words written and published in his life time. Thanks to the Royal Irish Academy and the scholar David Kelly I found ONLINE the amazing CONFESSION that Patrick wrote in his old age.
Patrick was a tumultuous man who lived in tumultuous times. His experience of slavery, from which few escaped alive, marked him deeply and turned him naked and hungry back to God. In a time of married clergy Patrick's father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest. They were upper class Roman-Britons living under the protection of Rome. Patrick's childhood had been an indulged one in a wealthy and privileged house hold. His capture by slavers off the coast of England, and his years of enslavement in Ireland hit him with the reality of the lives of others around him. He was especially shocked by the abuse of female slaves, and when he escaped and regained the protection of his family, he decided not to remain with them. Instead he vowed to return to Ireland and help the Irish.
Fifteen hundred years later the Irish wherever they are on the globe express their gratitude and love of the Saint who never abandoned them.
I decided to honor the Great saint's special day by looking up and reporting Saint Patrick's actual words written and published in his life time. Thanks to the Royal Irish Academy and the scholar David Kelly I found ONLINE the amazing CONFESSION that Patrick wrote in his old age.
Patrick was a tumultuous man who lived in tumultuous times. His experience of slavery, from which few escaped alive, marked him deeply and turned him naked and hungry back to God. In a time of married clergy Patrick's father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest. They were upper class Roman-Britons living under the protection of Rome. Patrick's childhood had been an indulged one in a wealthy and privileged house hold. His capture by slavers off the coast of England, and his years of enslavement in Ireland hit him with the reality of the lives of others around him. He was especially shocked by the abuse of female slaves, and when he escaped and regained the protection of his family, he decided not to remain with them. Instead he vowed to return to Ireland and help the Irish.
Fifteen hundred years later the Irish wherever they are on the globe express their gratitude and love of the Saint who never abandoned them.
Patrick’s Confessio
The Latin term confessio can be understood in three basic ways within the Christian tradition — confessio peccatorum (confession of sins), confessio fidei (confession or testimony of faith), and confessio laudis (confession of praise) — and a perusal of Patrick’s writing reveals the presence of all three of these modes.
The opening line of the Confessio announces who the writer is and how he evaluates himself
Ego Patricius peccator rusticissimus (C 1), ‘My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person.’ Referring to his slavery in Ireland and his lack of faith at the time, he says: ‘It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognised my failings. So I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God’ (C 2)
"For that reason, I give thanks to the one who strengthened me in all things, so that he would not impede me in the course I had undertaken and from the works also which I had learned from Christ my Lord. Rather, I sensed in myself no little strength from him, and my faith passed the test before God and people. (C 30)"
"I am greatly in debt to God. He gave me such great grace, that through me, many people should be born again in God and brought to full life. Also that clerics should be ordained everywhere for this people who have lately come to believe, and who the Lord has taken from the ends of the Earth. (C 38)"
"One time I was put to the test by some superiors of mine. They came and put my sins against my hard work as a bishop. (C 26)"
The charge brought against Patrick referred to something which had happened in his past and which had been disclosed through a betrayal of confidence on the part of a close friend:
"They brought up against me after thirty years something I had already confessed before I was a deacon. What happened was that, one day when I was feeling anxious and low, with a very dear friend of mine I referred to some things I had done one day — rather, in one hour — when I was young, before I overcame my weakness. I don’t know — God knows — whether I was then fifteen years old at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, not even when I was a child. In fact, I remained in death and unbelief until I was reproved strongly, and actually brought low by hunger and nakedness daily. (C 27)"
Patrick felt the pain of his friend’s betrayal long afterwards, and the memory of it was still fresh with him as he wrote his Confessio:
"But I grieve more for my very dear friend, that we had to hear such an account — the one to whom I entrusted my very soul. I did learn from some brothers before the case was heard that he came to my defence in my absence. I was not there at the time, not even in Britain, and it was not I who brought up the matter. In fact it was he himself who told me from his own mouth: ‛Look, you are being given the rank of bishop’. That is something I did not deserve. How could he then afterwards come to disgrace me in public before all, both good and bad, about a matter for which he had already freely and joyfully forgiven me, as indeed had God, who is greater than all? (C 32)"
Patrick was conscious of his own shortcomings in undertaking the task of writing the testimony of faith that is his Confessio, but his dogged perseverance and trust in God’s help kept him going and emboldened him to proclaim what the Lord had done for him:
"So I am first of all a simple country person, a refugee, and unlearned. I do not know how to provide for the future. But this I know for certain, that before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure. (C 12)"
Patrick is convinced that his humiliations have been the fertile seed-ground for the effective working of God’s grace in his life. He goes on to challenge his critics in these words:
"So be amazed, all you people great and small who fear God! You well-educated people in authority, listen and examine this carefully. Who was it who called one as foolish as I am from the middle of those who are seen to be wise and experienced in law and powerful in speech and in everything? If I am most looked down upon, yet he inspired me, before others, so that I would faithfully serve the nations with awe and reverence and without blame: the nations to whom the love of Christ brought me. His gift was that I would spend my life, if I were worthy of it, to serving them in truth and with humility to the end. (C 13)"
"In the knowledge of this faith in the Trinity, and without letting the dangers prevent it, it is right to make known the gift of God and his eternal consolation. It is right to spread abroad the name of God faithfully and without fear, so that even after my death I may leave something of value to the many thousands of my brothers and sisters — the children whom I baptised in the Lord. I didn’t deserve at all that the Lord would grant such great grace, after hardships and troubles, after captivity, and after so many years among that people. It was something which, when I was young, I never hoped for or even thought of. (C 14-15)
This spiritual journey upon which Patrick embarked provided the inner strength for his mission to Ireland. It was a mission that had its difficulties, as Patrick makes clear:
"It was not by my own grace, but God who overcame it in me, and resisted them all so that I could come to the peoples of Ireland to preach the gospel. I bore insults from unbelievers, so that I would hear the hatred directed at me for travelling here. I bore many persecutions, even chains, so that I could give up my freeborn state for the sake of others. If I be worthy, I am ready even to give up my life most willingly here and now for his name. It is there that I wish to spend my life until I die, if the Lord should grant it to me. (C 37)"
Although Patrick uses the verb ‘to confess’ (confiteri) a number of times in the opening sections of his Confessio, it is only towards the end that he employs a form of that actual noun:
"Again and again I briefly put before you the words of my confession (confessionis). I testify in truth and in great joy of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason for returning to that nation from which I had earlier escaped, except the gospel and God’s promises. (C 61)"
His closing request at the end of his Confessio appeals to those who believe and revere God:
"I pray for those who believe in and have reverence for God. Some of them may happen to inspect or come upon this writing which Patrick, a sinner without learning, wrote in Ireland. May none of them ever say that whatever little I did or made known to please God was done through ignorance. Instead, you can judge and believe in all truth that it was a gift of God. This is my confession before I die. (C 62)"
I cannot convey to you how profoundly I was moved to discover that Saint Patrick left behind this CONFESSION in his own words in his old age.
How blessed we are to have these words echoing down the centuries.They should be read from every pulpit.No wonder that SAINT PATRICK is a Saint recognized by both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is a Universal Missionary and a slave who returned to the scene of his own enslavement to free those who had enslaved him.WHAT A WONDER WORKER
I am left wanting to sing out loud that hymn the nuns taught us:
All praise to Saint Patrick,
who brought to our mountains
The gift of God's faith,
the sweet light of His love.
All praise to the Shepherd
who showed us the fountains
That rise in the Heart
of the Saviour above.
For hundreds of years,
In smiles and in tears,
Our Saint hath been with us,
our shield and our stay;
All else may have gone,
Saint Patrick alone.
He hath been to us light,
when earth's lights were all set,
For the glories of faith
they can never decay,
And the best of our glories
is bright with us yet,
in the faith and the feast
of Saint Patrick's day.
I cannot convey to you how profoundly I was moved to discover that Saint Patrick left behind this CONFESSION in his own words in his old age.
How blessed we are to have these words echoing down the centuries.They should be read from every pulpit.No wonder that SAINT PATRICK is a Saint recognized by both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is a Universal Missionary and a slave who returned to the scene of his own enslavement to free those who had enslaved him.WHAT A WONDER WORKER
I am left wanting to sing out loud that hymn the nuns taught us:
All praise to Saint Patrick,
who brought to our mountains
The gift of God's faith,
the sweet light of His love.
All praise to the Shepherd
who showed us the fountains
That rise in the Heart
of the Saviour above.
For hundreds of years,
In smiles and in tears,
Our Saint hath been with us,
our shield and our stay;
All else may have gone,
Saint Patrick alone.
He hath been to us light,
when earth's lights were all set,
For the glories of faith
they can never decay,
And the best of our glories
is bright with us yet,
in the faith and the feast
of Saint Patrick's day.
Saturday, March 16, 2019
DOES THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER STAY TOGETHER?
FATHER PATRICK PEYTON
Can we walk together the Road to Emmaus?
My mother was always devoted to the rosary. But her fervor increased dramatically in 1950 when we had to leave our second floor tenement on Englewood Avenue and move to a single family house that we rented on York Avenue. The house was built right up against the railroad tracks and there was no fence. My mother feared letting my sisters play in that yard.
It was during that time of despair that she must have either gone to a mission or heard a fervent sermon about the need to say the daily rosary. She began talking about Father Peyton and the message he brought from Ireland that "The family that prays together stays together."
One day I came home from Saint Teresa's School, and she had the sewing machine out and was making something with blue satin and white lace. Then she came into my bedroom and began hammering two support brackets into the wall. The brackets would support a square board. She covered the board in blue satin and she then began tacking a short skirt on the three sides of the board. The skirt was blue with a white lace overlay. Then she took our statue of the Virgin Mary, and she placed it on the new altar. She also placed a votive candle in a glass holder in front of the statue.
When Anna came home from work, she suggested that my mother should also place a square of cardboard covered in satin behind the statue and then weave artificial flowers in an arch like shape. We all worked happily on that project for a couple of days. Then my mother announced that we would all kneel each night and say the rosary. My mother believed that only Mary could save us from the dangers of York Avenue. And that is what we did for the next year until we got out of there.
In my constant open question--What Saints have come to Pawtucket or Rhode Island, I decided to see what had happened to Father Patrick Peyton from Ireland. And behold he has been named VENERABLE and that is a step to beatification.
Here is a prayer to Father Peyton:
Then I learned that the Venerable Father Peyton is buried very close to the BUCKET.
Can we walk together the Road to Emmaus?
My mother was always devoted to the rosary. But her fervor increased dramatically in 1950 when we had to leave our second floor tenement on Englewood Avenue and move to a single family house that we rented on York Avenue. The house was built right up against the railroad tracks and there was no fence. My mother feared letting my sisters play in that yard.
It was during that time of despair that she must have either gone to a mission or heard a fervent sermon about the need to say the daily rosary. She began talking about Father Peyton and the message he brought from Ireland that "The family that prays together stays together."
One day I came home from Saint Teresa's School, and she had the sewing machine out and was making something with blue satin and white lace. Then she came into my bedroom and began hammering two support brackets into the wall. The brackets would support a square board. She covered the board in blue satin and she then began tacking a short skirt on the three sides of the board. The skirt was blue with a white lace overlay. Then she took our statue of the Virgin Mary, and she placed it on the new altar. She also placed a votive candle in a glass holder in front of the statue.
When Anna came home from work, she suggested that my mother should also place a square of cardboard covered in satin behind the statue and then weave artificial flowers in an arch like shape. We all worked happily on that project for a couple of days. Then my mother announced that we would all kneel each night and say the rosary. My mother believed that only Mary could save us from the dangers of York Avenue. And that is what we did for the next year until we got out of there.
In my constant open question--What Saints have come to Pawtucket or Rhode Island, I decided to see what had happened to Father Patrick Peyton from Ireland. And behold he has been named VENERABLE and that is a step to beatification.
Here is a prayer to Father Peyton:
Prayer for a Favor through Peyton
God, our Father,
your wisdom is displayed in all creation
and the power of your grace is revealed
in the lives of holy people
who inspire us to trust you more fully
and to serve others more generously.
In a unique way,
you blessed the life and work of your servant
Father Patrick Peyton, C.S.C.,
and made him a fervent apostle of Mary,
Queen of the Holy Rosary and Mother of us all.
Through his intercession,
we ask for this favor…
Please grant it, if it is for your honor and glory,
through Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
Grave of Rev. Patrick Peyton, recently named “Venerable” by Pope Francis, has become place of pilgrimage for Catholics and their rosary beads.
EASTON – When Rev. Patrick Peyton visited Stonehill College in 1966, it was at the height of his worldwide prayer rallies that drew hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of people.
Peyton, known as the “Rosary Priest,” was acclaimed for his motto that “the family that prays together stays together.”
His visit to Stonehill was just a quiet one, though – he was stopping by to visit the Congregation of Holy Cross school, the same order as his alma mater of Notre Dame. Willy Raymond was in the seminary at the time, and remembers Peyton getting a haircut from fellow priest Hugh Cleary.
“It was right over there,” Raymond said Friday, pointing from his office over to the Holy Cross Center. “And Hugh said, ‘I should probably save those hair clippings.’”
Peyton died in 1992, and his body was brought to Easton to be buried in a Congregation of Holy Cross cemetery.
Holy Cross Family Ministries, based in Easton, continues the work of Peyton’s Family Rosary USA and Family Theater Productions. Their current facility at Stonehill was built in 2000, and has a statue of Peyton holding a set of rosary beads outside their Father Peyton Center.
They send out about one million complementary sets of rosary beads each year, according to external relations director Susan Wallace.
Peyton’s recognition as venerable puts him in select company: about 16 American have received the distinction. Another eight have been beatified (the next step in the canonization process), and 14 have been declared saints.
Peyton was born in 1909 in Ireland, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1928.
He reportedly suffered from advanced tuberculosis in the late 1930s, but miraculously recovered through prayer, according to Holy Cross Family Ministries.
Peyton died in California in 1992 at the age of 83.
So his grave is only a few miles and less than an hour's drive away. I have decided that visiting his grave will be my POST-EASTER Pilgrimage. I will go there to pray for better health and for the grace to endure with a happier spirit the limited life that I now have.
THE ROAD TO EASTON WILL BE MY ROAD TO EMMAUS.Friday, March 15, 2019
Is laughing harder than crying?
JESUS WEPT, BUT DID HE LAUGH?
Think of how many times a great comic moment has perched on the fulcrum of despair. The best Shakespearean example is no doubt Falstaff. But the rage and bitterness when his old boon companion Prince Harry spurns him is volcanic.
Comics know this: their comedy is erected against their knowledge of the darkness of human experience. It insists on finding something to laugh about and love in the grimness of human life.
“Virgin and Laughing Child” is unveiled as Leonardo da Vinci’s only surviving sculpture
I was enchanted when I first saw this image of a laughing Baby Jesus which Leonardo is believed to have created when he was nineteen years old.
We have instances of the weeping of Jesus described in the new Testament. But not of his happy laughter. It must have been difficult for a person who knew so much of the evil men do to laugh.
But as a life long student of comedy, I have concluded that comedy is much harder than tragedy. Writers know how to bring tears, but they are not so sure of how to incite laughter. And when they do and do it often, they can become very famous. But we are more aware of the rage and sadness behind many comedians. It erupts when they let us see it, and it is what actually gives the bite to their work.
Think of the many comics who have committed suicide.
Most recently Brody and most famous Robin Williams. They join a long list of comics who have used their rage to fuel their brilliant comedy and finally the rage took over.
I have known a couple of very funny people in my life and both are raging underneath. It is the knowledge they have of the "WAY OF THE WORLD" and the way they exploit that knowledge for laughter that jolts us all.
Think of how many times a great comic moment has perched on the fulcrum of despair. The best Shakespearean example is no doubt Falstaff. But the rage and bitterness when his old boon companion Prince Harry spurns him is volcanic.
Or another Shakespeare comic butt is Malvolio with his cross- garters, but he also quivers with rage when he finds out that the joke is on him.
The secret of laughter is its evanescence:
"What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies not plenty; Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure."
So we must laugh and love when we still can.
Why is Dante's great masterpiece called THE DIVINE COMEDY?
Because of its ending--it ends happily. But first we have had to pass through the Inferno and the Purgatorio to make it to Paradiso.
We all must borrow some of the PANACHE of Cyrano de Bergerac and the insistence on tilting with the windmills of this world of the heroic Don QUIXOTE.
We must not wallow in despair. Look at the laughing Baby Jesus and know that He laughed all the while He knew the Cross was waiting for Him.
lay before him.
Saturday, March 9, 2019
DUOLINGO and learning SPANISH in the Bucket.
A NEW DOOR IN MY BRAIN HAS OPENED
For the past six weeks or so I have been studying Spanish online on a site called DUOLINGO.
It is absolutely free and you can learn many different languages. Duolingo is like a game or so I imagine. It is interactive. And it has many exercises that force the student to add vocabulary and verb tenses in the course of understanding and hearing and repeating sentences--just as we learned our first language as a child.
It is not about rules or verb conjugations or grammar. It is about learning in a context and it feels immersive. I go there every day and can not stand to miss a day, And this has brought me a great reward.
I discovered many years ago the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Reading his gorgeous lines made me want to learn to read and understand Spanish. I bought many bilingual editions of his poetry--his poetry of revolution and his poetry of love. And I would try to memorize lines in Spanish but I did not even know how to read or pronounce them.
Last night just as an experiment I looked up on line some of Nerudas's love poems and their English translation.
And a miracle has happened here in the deepest darkest corner of the BUCKET.
I could read the Spanish out loud and I feel confident that my pronunciation is pretty close. Because on Duo lingo you hear the sentences spoken by Spanish speakers. And you the learner repeat them back.
Most encouraging I could see the words and lines and understand them.
I looked for one of my favorite poems and here it is:
For the past six weeks or so I have been studying Spanish online on a site called DUOLINGO.
It is absolutely free and you can learn many different languages. Duolingo is like a game or so I imagine. It is interactive. And it has many exercises that force the student to add vocabulary and verb tenses in the course of understanding and hearing and repeating sentences--just as we learned our first language as a child.
It is not about rules or verb conjugations or grammar. It is about learning in a context and it feels immersive. I go there every day and can not stand to miss a day, And this has brought me a great reward.
I discovered many years ago the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Reading his gorgeous lines made me want to learn to read and understand Spanish. I bought many bilingual editions of his poetry--his poetry of revolution and his poetry of love. And I would try to memorize lines in Spanish but I did not even know how to read or pronounce them.
Last night just as an experiment I looked up on line some of Nerudas's love poems and their English translation.
And a miracle has happened here in the deepest darkest corner of the BUCKET.
I could read the Spanish out loud and I feel confident that my pronunciation is pretty close. Because on Duo lingo you hear the sentences spoken by Spanish speakers. And you the learner repeat them back.
Most encouraging I could see the words and lines and understand them.
I looked for one of my favorite poems and here it is:
If You Forget Me - Pablo Neruda
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Sunday, March 3, 2019
Celebrating MARTISOR in the Bucket
FRIENDSHIP AND CONNECTION WITH OTHERS IN ROMANIA
I am not sure if I have mentioned on this blog the fact that I spent a year teaching in the city of Timisoara in Romania under the auspices of the Fulbright Program. I know I alluded to it in my blog entry where I mourned the loss of a wonderful woman doctor Pat Kennedy Issarescu, MD who was married to a member of the old Romanian royal family and was the sister of my good friend here in Rhode Island,
So much happened in that year in Romania, and I did not try to write about it after I returned to my regular teaching gig at the University of Cincinnati. Although I have found some journals that I kept during that time, which have brought back some memories.
This time of year and this unruly snowy beginning of March reminded me of how this month is welcomed in Romania. MARCH FIRST is a holiday there. I did not know that until I saw vendors in the streets and squares selling small string bracelets and pins for a small amount of money. Maybe one lei or less. I asked students what they were for and they explained to me that they were to welcome Spring and were given as good luck for the coming year to friends and family and any one whom you wished to show your friendship to. They said that I would no doubt receive some.
So I bought about ten and kept them in my pockets and waited for March 1.
This holiday is another one of those cultural reminders of the Romanian connection with ROME. After all Romania was a Roman colony and Romania has Roman ruins as do all the Balkan countries. Most of all the Romanian language-although pronounced very differently, is a Romance Language and has its roots in Latin and later Italian. That is one of the reasons that Romanians seem to all speak French and Spanish and Italian so easily. They are all close language buddies.
So I was happy when on March 1 in going into the University of the West campus and climbing the stairs to the American Library where I hung out several students stopped to give me bracelets or pins of red and white string with tassels. I was glad that I was able to give them a similar keepsake. March is the first day of Spring and in Romania, unlike here in RI, the weather seemed to cooperate.
Pansies were showing their faces in the lovely beds planted in front of the cathedral. That is hard to imagine as we await yet another winter snowstorm and frigid temperatures. But March was named by the Romans to honor the God of War -- MARS. And it was the first month of the Roman calendar.
The IDES OF MARCH made infamous by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was considered the most auspicious time to go into battle.
The Romanians give the thread as a talisman against evil, and it is considered the thread of life. Not unlike the one the Fates weave and will cut to determine the length of each human life. Braided with red and white strings to show the unity of opposites of male and female and winter and spring and life and death.
THAT IS A LOT TO THINK ABOUT
SO I GIVE A SHOUT OUT TO ALL OF MY ROMANIAN FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES--SOME I STILL HEAR FROM AND OTHERS HAVE PASSED INTO THE OBLIVION OF FORGETFULNESS.
I am not sure if I have mentioned on this blog the fact that I spent a year teaching in the city of Timisoara in Romania under the auspices of the Fulbright Program. I know I alluded to it in my blog entry where I mourned the loss of a wonderful woman doctor Pat Kennedy Issarescu, MD who was married to a member of the old Romanian royal family and was the sister of my good friend here in Rhode Island,
So much happened in that year in Romania, and I did not try to write about it after I returned to my regular teaching gig at the University of Cincinnati. Although I have found some journals that I kept during that time, which have brought back some memories.
This time of year and this unruly snowy beginning of March reminded me of how this month is welcomed in Romania. MARCH FIRST is a holiday there. I did not know that until I saw vendors in the streets and squares selling small string bracelets and pins for a small amount of money. Maybe one lei or less. I asked students what they were for and they explained to me that they were to welcome Spring and were given as good luck for the coming year to friends and family and any one whom you wished to show your friendship to. They said that I would no doubt receive some.
So I bought about ten and kept them in my pockets and waited for March 1.
This holiday is another one of those cultural reminders of the Romanian connection with ROME. After all Romania was a Roman colony and Romania has Roman ruins as do all the Balkan countries. Most of all the Romanian language-although pronounced very differently, is a Romance Language and has its roots in Latin and later Italian. That is one of the reasons that Romanians seem to all speak French and Spanish and Italian so easily. They are all close language buddies.
So I was happy when on March 1 in going into the University of the West campus and climbing the stairs to the American Library where I hung out several students stopped to give me bracelets or pins of red and white string with tassels. I was glad that I was able to give them a similar keepsake. March is the first day of Spring and in Romania, unlike here in RI, the weather seemed to cooperate.
Pansies were showing their faces in the lovely beds planted in front of the cathedral. That is hard to imagine as we await yet another winter snowstorm and frigid temperatures. But March was named by the Romans to honor the God of War -- MARS. And it was the first month of the Roman calendar.
The IDES OF MARCH made infamous by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was considered the most auspicious time to go into battle.
The Romanians give the thread as a talisman against evil, and it is considered the thread of life. Not unlike the one the Fates weave and will cut to determine the length of each human life. Braided with red and white strings to show the unity of opposites of male and female and winter and spring and life and death.
THAT IS A LOT TO THINK ABOUT
SO I GIVE A SHOUT OUT TO ALL OF MY ROMANIAN FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES--SOME I STILL HEAR FROM AND OTHERS HAVE PASSED INTO THE OBLIVION OF FORGETFULNESS.
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