First Profession of Vows....

Congratulations to the seven men who yesterday professed temporary vows in the Congregation of Holy Cross. Our Vocation Office blog, Spes Unica, has a great posting on this blessed event in the life of the congregation and the Church. God bless our newly professed and their travels from the Novitiate in Cascade, CO to their new home at Moreau Seminary.

Today I begin a week-long retreat with a few good friends. Please keep us in your prayers.

A Great "Anytime" Read....

Ron Hansen's writing was first introduced to me years ago by an ordination classmate who highly praised Mariette in Ecstasy. Indeed it is a great read. Early this summer mutual friends introduced me to Hansen's essay, "Eucharist" found in his 2001 collection A Stay Against Confusion.

I just finished reading the remaining essays and through the ideas and information I feel "more Catholic". It makes for a great summer or anytime read. Throughout the first three essays Hansen effectively and beautifully communicates the sacramentality of writing. A novelist, like any artist or craftsman, is capable of providing a glimpse of the Divine. Incapable of encountering the Divine directly, the Divine is know-able and we touch the Divine through the sacraments and sacramentals and by expressing the natural order sacramentally.

His essay on the story of Cain and Abel is piercing in honesty. In it he admits those rarely named raw emotions we all tend to feel in our childhood - jealousy, amazement of new abilities, desirous of praise etc.

His meditation on the "Anima Christi" prayer is beautiful and penetrating. It could be read by the pool and in a chapel. The familiar words are re-introduced.

The aforementioned essay "Eucharist" highlights all the smells and bells nitty gritty of Catholic liturgical life. The writing reminds me as a priest of the importance which should and is placed upon how we speak of the sacred. If we believe what we say and pray then with what great care and soberness should we attend to this august reality.

Episcopal Congratulations....

Congratulations and Blessings to Jose Manuel Gracia Cordeiro who has been named by Pope Benedict XVI as bishop of the Diocese of Braganca-Miranda in Portugal. Bishop-elect Cordeiro taught a seminar two springs ago at Sant'Anselmo entitled, "'Ministero' and 'Sacramentum' in the First Millennium". It was a fine course. A fine seminar.

Into Africa...

After morning Lauds at Moreau Seminary, Holy Cross Seminarian, Mark DeMott, CSC departed for the African nation of Uganda where he will serve for a year teaching at Holy Cross Lakeview Senior Secondary School in Jinga, Uganda.

DeMott has begun a blog in order to keep us all posted. Let us pray for him as he begins this year of ministry at the Headwaters of the Nile.

ND Oblation Post...

The Notre Dame Center for Liturgy's blog, Oblation: Liturgy and Evangelization posted part 1 of a piece I wrote on Liturgical Sequences.

Part 2 is now online.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.....

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - the titular feast for the priest society of the Congregation of Holy Cross. When founding his community, Blessed Basil Moreau dedicated each society with the hope that through divine protection and providence the three societies might flourish and bear witness to the Holy Family. He wrote in his Circular Letter 20:

Above all, let us work with that strength, unity and clear understanding which come from mutual cooperation and the possession of all things in common. We must never lose sight of the fact that strength of numbers, joined with unity of aim and action, is the greatest of all strengths and is limited only by the bounds of the possible. Besides, it is this perfect unity which, with the aid of grace, I have tried to cement among the various members of our association by consecrating the priests to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the brothers to the Most Pure Heart of St. Joseph, and the sisters to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Thus, these three establishments, although separated by special dwelling places and special rules, will be united among themselves like the Holy Family, to which our future chapel will be dedicated.

On this feast of July 1, 2011 the Eastern Province of Priests and Brothers officially merge with the Indiana Province. And from this merger comes a new name and a new website: United States Province of Priests and Brothers.

May God's Providence and the Divine Mercy which flows from the Most Sacred Heart guide and bless us.