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Catholic Retreat - A Time for Renewal

Fr. Cyriac Mattathilanickal, M.S.,
Director, La Salette Retreat
Center, Attleboro, MA
Lent is a season of repentance and renewal, a time to turn away from our sinfulness and recommit ourselves to following Jesus. Retreats are a way for Catholics to have the time to contemplate better and more deeply how to embrace Jesus' message. There are retreats for youth, young adults, married couples, and individuals. They can be for just men or women, or co-ed. They can last a weekend, a work week, or just a day. Just as Jesus regularly took time away to pray to his Father, a Catholic ought regularly to do the same.

La Salette Retreat Center

“It's important in the sense that anyone who is in a serious relationship with God needs time away from the daily stuff that is going on with their life to focus on a retreat — that is a time with God,” said Father Cyriac Mattathilanickal, director of La Salette Retreat Center in Attleboro for the past six years.
 
Whether immersed in college courses, taking care of a family or lost in a stressful job, everything you do and the choices you make must reflect your faith, said Father Mattathilanickal, and retreats offer individuals that opportunity; “Take a look at what I am doing and why I am doing it; where is God in it all? Where does God show up in my life? Anyone who is serious about his faith really wants to look at his life and see if he is fulfilling that call that God has given.”

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Making a Difference

My name is Fr. Dennis Loomis, M.S., presently Superior General of the La Salette Missionaries. Several years ago while I was visiting our Missionaries in Argentina, I heard about a special woman who felt called to make a difference. Here is her inspiring story:
 
Her name is Mercedes and she is a short, thin middle-aged woman living in a barrio (a poor neighborhood) in Cordoba, Argentina. Not the kind of person you would suspect of creating and running her very own and self-sustained soup kitchen for over two hundred people a day in her own home! And it’s all the more impressive when one experiences the small, tight quarters she and her family live in.
 
I met her when one of our La Salette missionaries asked if I wanted to see where and how some of the money sent by the La Salettes in North America is being used. Naturally I was interested.

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A True Missionary Spirit

Fr. Clément Moussier
(1860-1919)
(l to r) Frs. William Breault
(1894-1974) and Aloysius
Spielman (1892-1948)
For almost 110 years various La Salette Missionaries have directly impacted American mission efforts. They were men of vision and personified the La Salette mission spirit. They were men who recognized that, alone, they could do very little. They requested, and generously received support from numerous Co-Missionaries – Laity, Religious and Priests.
 
The first La Salette to depart from the USA to minister in a mission country was Fr. Clément Moussier, a native of France. In 1904 he left from the parish of St. James in Danielson, CT to serve in the parish of Santa Anna in Sâo Paulo, Brazil. La Salette presence in the North America was barely 10 years old. Bolstered also by La Salette confreres from other countries, he worked tirelessly and in 1934 both the USA and Brazil would be among the first four areas of the Congregation to become Provinces. 

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Shrine Offers Shelter

In what can only seem like a nightmare to residents so close to Halloween, thousands across the area remained without power Sunday night with no clear timetable on when service will be restored.

Untitled-1Virginia Leveille, left, and Janet Millian, play a game of cards while passing the time away in the community room at the Wrentham police station Tuesday. (Chronicle staff photo by Mark Stockwell) 
A storm system that moved through the area Saturday night, Oct. 29, 2011, dumped 2.5 inches of wet, heavy snow in Attleboro, breaking the previous October record of 2 inches in 1979, according to the city’s water department. The snow snapped tree branches and power lines across the area, leaving thousands of residents in the dark and those who rely on electric heat in the cold.
 
Shelters opened up around the area to help those in need and the darkness forced some of the harder-hit areas to cancel school today and, in some cases, even postpone trick-or-treating. With it becoming clear that power would not be restored Sunday night, and fearful that those who depend on electric heat would be in danger on a night with frigid temperatures in the forecast, officials opted to open emergency shelters for those who needed a warm place to stay.
 
La Salette National Shrine on Park Street in Attleboro opened at 6 p.m. to serve as a regional shelter for several area communities. The shelter was staffed with public health personnel from Attleboro and Norton and offered guests cots and warm surroundings.

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All Are Missionaries

Editor: Vacationing missionaries are a proverbial “breath of fresh air.” Fr. Jack Garvey wrote this note after preaching back in North America.

Untitled-1
Fr. Jack Garvey, M.S., La
Salette Missionary in Argentina

“Living and working with a people who suffer many privations gives all missionaries a different perspective on life. They serve a people who, despite their problems, maintain their courage, a people who grub at the land – sometimes not too fertile – hoping to grow sufficient crops, a people who seek more gainful employment, a people of faith in God and a people truly gracious toward their fellow human beings. It is our privilege to work among them.

When we come home to the U.S. every three years on vacation, it is indeed a return to our native land, a return to a lifestyle of relative comfort and convenience, a return to a land where air conditioning, relatively new cars and comfortable homes are perceived as natural. While enjoying this lifestyle, vacationing missionaries cannot forget the struggles of their people and the mission of the Church. And so, thanks to the Mission Cooperative Programs in many dioceses, each weekend they frequent different parishes to give mission appeals, speaking to God’s people of the missionary Apostolate of the Church and the lives and struggles of peoples in the lands where they minister.

…While visiting at home, I often preach many mission appeals. I see these weekends as an opportunity to bring to the people back home an increasing awareness of the missionary work of the Church. It is my custom is to stand outside the church and greet people after Mass. One Sunday after Mass to my great surprise a lady spoke to me about that day’s Gospel reading. It referred to the Lord’s choice of the 72 whom he sent out 2 by 2 to preach the Gospel (Luke: 10:1). The lady said to me: “Of course priests and religious are missionaries, but aren’t we also missionaries? Those 72 referred to in this morning’s Gospel were not priests or religious but laity.” She had indeed gotten the message. Christ founded a missionary Church in which each believer has an important mission to fulfill.

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Festival of Lights Brightens Season

Attleboro, Mass. — When Our Lady of La Salette visited two shepherd children, 15-year-old Melanie Calvat, and 11-year-old Maximin Giraud, on a mountain side in the French Alps in 1846, she appeared “within a light that was brighter than the sun.” It’s in that tradition of light that the Missionaries of La Salette in Attleboro established the Festival of Lights in 1953. 

Since then, millions have flocked to the shrine between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day to view the Christmas story illuminated by thousands of lights, giving pilgrims “the opportunity to meditate on the close relationship between the Christ Child, the Light of the World, and his mother,” who appeared to the shepherd children in a dazzling brilliance.

While the Christmas message remains the same, the festival has evolved a great deal leading into the 58th year. A series of new displays and the gradual transition to LED lighting, this year’s Festival of Lights, entitled “Light of Life” promises to be inspiring and breathtaking. “It is my hope that each and every visitor may be touched by Jesus’ light and be reborn,” said shrine director, La Salette Brother Bob Russell. “It is also my hope that those who come become a light of life to their families and all those they meet throughout their lifetimes.”

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Fr. Jack’s New Mission

Fr. Jack Nuelle, M.S., soon-to-be
appointed Executive Director of the
United States Catholic Mission Association

There is a saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This saying are seems quite fitting for recently retired Fr. Jack Nuelle, M.S. His efforts for the past fifteen years as founder and Executive Director the LSMC – the La Salette Mission Center – now based in St. Louis, MO, are well known. 

At the annual meeting of the membership of the United States Catholic Mission Association (USCMA), which was held on October 28-30, 2011, he was asked about accepting the position of Executive Director of that National Organization. Having been asked in advance of the meeting, he told the Board of Directors that he would accept this new position.

Fr. Jack explained in a letter to his fellow La Salettes about his process of discernment: “That invitation came at a time when, as you know, I had just stepped down as executive director of the LSMC… and now I was planning a ‘leisurely’ retirement. I had often said that ‘if one wanted to make God laugh, one need only tell God one’s plans.’ Well, God started laughing again! You have all experienced over the last 50+ years my zeal for the Mission of the Church and the way we, La Salette Missionaries, are asked to minister in that global Mission. So I entered into a prayerful discernment process, which led me out into the deep… My roots, as a La Salette Missionary, were and are in Mission! I also heard the expression: “Keep your missionary roots watered,” and came to see the ministry of executive director of the USCMA as a way of doing so. This called me to utter my ‘Fiat.’”

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Fifty Years of Faith

Brother Bob Russell, Director of La Salette
Shrine in Attleboro, in front of the Shrine
Church. (Staff photo by Mike George)
Brother Bob Russell, M.S., marks half a century by thinking of new ways to serve. When he isn't performing in a talent show fundraiser, say as Elvis or Whoopi Goldberg, turning in cans and tabs to raise money for LED lighting for the La Salette Shrine Christmas display, leading prayer groups or countless other undertakings, the Rev. Brother Bob Russell is thinking - thinking of other ways to make people welcome and the shrine successful.
 
“People say I don't sleep,” he said after ticking off a lengthy list of all the activities planned or in the planning at the shrine. He said that after dozing off while watching the Rangers-Cardinals World Series game last Sunday, “I woke up refreshed. And guess what I thought? We could have a La Salette Movie Night.” His first choice for a movie would be “Pay It Forward.” The young actor in that movie needs to do a social studies assignment: Think of something to change the world and put it into action. He decides on the notion of paying a favor, not back, but forward - repaying good deeds with other good deeds for three new people.
 
It's not unlike the lesson Russell learned from his parents. “My mother would say: 'Say what you mean, mean what you say - and do it,” said Russell, who has been director of the shrine twice in the past seven years.
 

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Good Shepherd – Good News

As with the history of any family, life is a mixture of gifts and challenges. So it is with the family of Good Shepherd Parish, Orlando, FL. Speaking as a La Salette Missionary, I see this community as a wonderful mixture of people dedicated to their Catholic faith and their parish community. Their parish life is vibrant, their liturgies prayerful and personal. I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating with them occasionally during my eight years at nearby Blessed Trinity Parish.
 
Fr. Roman Gromala ministered
from March 1956 to Dec 1957
From its fledgling beginnings as a small mission in 1956 to its being named a parish on Dec. 21, 1957, this parish has grown and flourished. An interesting historical footnote, found in the parish history collected by Fr. Rene Butler, M.S. for the parish’s 50th anniversary, is about the early history of their first pastor, Fr. William J. Weinheimer. 
 
As a young priest he did his studies at one of the universities in Rome from approximately 1946-1948, while living at the Belgian College there. At the same time he became friends with a young Polish priest who also lived at the College. His name was Fr. Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. Perhaps that was an indication of great potential of his small parish of Good Shepherd.
  
I remember well when Fr. Camillo “Sonny” Avitabile, M.S., was named its eighth pastor in September of 1981. He was just delighted to take on the challenge of serving the Parish Family of Good Shepherd.

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La Salette at World Youth Day

Pope Benedict greets the thousands of youth in Madrid at World Youth Day 2011
I was pleasantly surprised to be asked by Fr. John Welch, M.S. to go with him to the World Youth Day in August, 2011, in Madrid, Spain. We decided to host this trip on behalf of our La Salette Province. We gathered a group of twelve people, a mixture of adults, high school and college age people and travelled to Valencia, Spain, to experience first a “Day in the Diocese.” 

Youth by the Thousands

 

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