We Would Love
to Keep in Touch!

A Tale of Two Christmases

Untitled-1
Very Rev. Fr. Dennis Loomis,
M.S., Superior General,
La Salette Missionaries

What a difference perspective can make. The way we see things at one point in our life can radically change as time goes by. As I look back on Christmases past, my focus as a child was totally and completely on gifts, and this continued long after I grew into adulthood.

As children, we were given various catalogues that came to our house through the mail, and we were asked to choose one big gift and one small gift. Anything else we were to receive would be of a practical nature, mostly clothes.

Untitled-2

Santa’s helper visits La
Salette's National Shrine,
during Christmas
 Festival of Lights

I would agonize for days over my choices, and the agony became especially intense as the deadline for choosing drew nearer. If Advent was a season for the preparation for Christmas, my Catholic education notwithstanding, my only preoccupation was on the gifts we would get at home as well as those from my grandparents and uncles and aunts. I guess I was materialistic before materialistic became the vogue. However, life goes on and all of us change.

I cannot with any precision, say when my attitude changed, but change it did. Certainly it was sometime during my transition from childhood to adulthood, when I began to take special notice of the liturgical readings. Prior to that event was another significant episode. On retreat, our director focused almost totally on the passage from John's Gospel: “For God loved the world so much that he gave he gave his only Son, so that every one who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge but to be its Savior” (Jn 3:16-17).

Read more A Tale of Two Christmases

Making Her Message Known Digitally

As we begin a New Year of Our Lord 2012, it’s good to remember that the “good news” underlying Mary’s words at La Salette to pray and follow her Son each day and we will be blessed beyond measure. Now that’s a New Year’s resolution on which we can all take time to reflect!

Our Past and Present – A Growing Proposition

For the past several years, I have been serving as Director of our La Salette Communications Center in Attleboro, MA. It has been one of the most challenging and enjoyable ministries in my forty years of priesthood as a La Salette Missionary. We began about five years ago. We published a professional La Salette magazine quarterly for over two years, La Salette America, with many supportive comments. Now it’s offered online.

Read more Making Her Message Known Digitally

Global Communications: a Curse or a Gift?

I remember as a young boy making wax records with my dad. As a teenager I collected 45 rpm records, used a wire recorder and I had a collection of 8-track tapes. Today as a web publisher myself, I am swimming in geeky things like digital recorders, our “Joomla” website (an open source software whose contributors share their time, talent and web programs from all over the world). I speak regularly with my fellow La Salette Missionaries by Skype (an audio-visual connection) although they live in Cochabamba, Bolivia or Rome, Italy. 
 
Because I live in a steel-framed older building, I had to get an iPhone in order to receive telephone calls in my house. I now communicate every three weeks with over 800 La Salettes in 25 countries by my internet email newsletter. I am publishing one book this year in a paper edition as well as three books in an eBook format. I do a weekly podcast (radio program) containing my Sunday sermons. And, even with all of this, I still feel somewhat overwhelmed by our present-day communications technology.

Read more Global Communications: a Curse or a Gift?

Giving It All We’ve Got

Several months ago I saw the movie “The Hurt Locker.” It is a wonderful example of a person who had absolute dedication to something — disarming bombs! It was riveting and gave a solid example of someone who “gave it all he had.”
 
The Prophet Jeremiah by Michelangelo,
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
I admire people like that. They inspire me to keep going and not give up, to face a challenge and keep chipping away at it until I overcome it. I remember my mother who, in the early 1960’s while I was still in High School, went back to school to learn keypunch (an early form of computer data entry) at the age of 40! Most of the people in her class were a little older than me. She had her struggles but never gave up. Then she ended up teaching this valuable skill and more to many youngsters over her 25 years of service at the Aetna Insurance Company.
 
All of us have met people like this, who accomplish great things by just sticking it out, persevering until the end. As a Catholic priest, I can’t help but think of the prophets of the Pentateuch, like Jeremiah. He was chosen by God as a youth to tell God’s people the truth, to confront them with where they needed to change and grow. He was ignored by his own people, resisted by most, even threatened with death, but he never gave up, although he was tempted many a time. With God’s assurances and strength, he “gave it all he had.”
 
I remember hearing the story of a young boy who had found a chrysalis attached to a small branch and brought it home. As he watched it with excitement over the next week, he saw that the cocoon was opening slightly. Innocently he attempted to help the butterfly in its struggle to open the cocoon. However, to his great disappointment, when the butterfly finally was set free, it could not fly. He surprisingly found out that the butterfly’s process of struggle to free itself was absolutely necessary in order to build up strength in its wings to fly away. The child learned a great lesson – challenges and difficulties can indeed make us stronger.

Read more Giving It All We’ve Got

One Mystery a Day

Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Praying the Rosary is one of my favorite prayers, but a practice that I have trouble fitting into my busy schedule. Catholics now-a-days are being encouraged to find quiet time, to let God speak to their hearts; they are into meditative prayer; praying with scripture, saying the Jesus prayer. It makes me grieve as I ponder what has happened, and I wonder why a prayer that is so powerful a petition to so caring a Mother of the entire world should be neglected by many Catholics.
 
This sentiment is also revealed by the famed Catherine de Hueck Doherty in her inspirational book "I Live On an Island” wherein she states that she does not “say” the Rosary, she “meditates” it, and in so doing reflects on only one mystery a day; sometimes she is so plunged into one of the mysteries that she has to stay, there, waiting until God himself slowly reveals as much of it as he desires.
 
When I read that, I was overjoyed! The answer had been given to me. That very day I decided to meditate just one mystery a day; saying one Our Father, Ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be. But before I start I immerse myself in the mystery of the day. This I can do as I work around the house, drive the car, wait in a doctor’s office. I try to put myself there, feel what Mary, Joseph or Jesus, or the other people might have been experiencing. I prepare my mind, soul, and entire being before I start the actual prayers.

Read more One Mystery a Day

God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World

 

The fall season is upon us and as a native New Englander, I’ve always been fascinated with the riotous festival of color all around us. As a child, I was more than once treated to a family fall foliage tour, spending a weekend traveling at random through the New England countryside. There’s something undeniably special — and even uplifting — about the wonders of nature in any season.
 
When I was in High School, my class memorized several of Robert Frost’s poems. One of my favorites 
was “The Road Not Taken,” (1915). On the surface it speaks about walking in the woods in the Fall, coming upon a fork in the road, taking one path but wondering what would have happened if he had taken the other path. Aside from the possibly profound comments of “what could have been”, it seems that Frost was always learning life-lessons from nature. 
 
I love his poem, “Mending Wall” (1915), written north of Boston, in which he wonders what’s to be learned in, firstly, how the frost breaks the wall and, secondly why people feel the need to mend the wall again. His famous phrase, “Good fences make good neighbors,” perhaps means that the wall can help to clarify proper divisions — but do we really need these divisions any more?

Read more God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World

Bullying - We Aren’t in Kansas Any More

Back in the “good old days” when I was just a boy in the 1950s entering grammar school, I began my first day of school with a bit of fear about meeting the other kids in my First Grade class but I was happy to begin school at last! 
 

As we got into line to go to our classroom, I remember this tall eighth grader come over to me and say, “when we go out for recess, I’m gonna punch you out!” I remember being instantly petrified and wanting to get away from that kid. I don’t remember anything about what was said in class that morning. All I remember is that, in the confusion of getting in line to go out for recess, I managed to sneak out of line and run home, just over a block away.
 
I went into my home and went immediately to my room and hid – where else – but under my bed. As an only child, I knew nobody else would be home. After what seemed a long time, I remembered that I had to take out the garbage. So quite innocently I performed my regular chores. 
 
My neighbor noticed that I was home and wondered why. She apparently called the school and found out that I had ran away that morning. She came over and asked me gently but firmly why I was home. I told her my story and she brought me over to her apartment for a sandwich since she regularly took care of me when my parents were at work.

Read more Bullying - We Aren’t in Kansas Any More

Eucharist: a Reconciling Event

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel, the famous Jewish chronicler of the Holocaust experience, a Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor is the author of 57 books. Here he recounts the story of a small uprising in one of the death camps during World War II.  The uprising failed miserably, but one of the German guards was killed. In retribution, the camp commandant chose three inmates to be put to death in reprisal, one of whom was a frail little boy. 

The morning dawned for the execution and the three were hanged before all the camp's view. The little boy was so light that he was struggling in vain at the end of his noose in agony. Standing alongside Elie Wiesel, a fellow inmate commented in a low, drawn voice, “Where is your God now?” Wiesel slowly raised his hand and pointed to the dying little boy and said, “He is there at the end of that rope.”

 
When I first heard this story, I was deeply moved. It touched off within me so many images and feelings – of a little boy whom I knew who had died so courageously of leukemia – of a sense of injustice and sin which cuts right to the very quick of my life, our life in this world. I cannot help but cry out in prayer, "Lord, deliver us! Save your people from the madness of sin."

Read more Eucharist: a Reconciling Event

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

More than once, I distinctly remember my mother smiling, shaking her head and uttering a favorite old French saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I find it is a truism, succinctly explaining many situations.
 
Another saying also rings true: Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. Whether in government or church matters, we all know of examples of people who, if they had only stopped to reflect for more than a moment, would have avoided making a mistake. If only…
 
I am certainly not saying that there is nothing new under the sun. What I mean is that there are many things that seem to reoccur in life—whether we live in 2011 or in 309. As an example, I invite you to listen to someone’s comments about those people who long constantly for “the good old days.”

Read more The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

A Tree of Remembrance

Statue of Our Lady of La Salette in
St. Ann’s Garden of Reconciliation

As La Salettes, in imitation of Mary at La Salette, we are called to seek out opportunities to bring the charism of reconciliation to every corner of our world, or as Mary said: “to all my people.” Recently some members of the Church of St. Ann in Marietta, GA, have welcomed the leadership of the Etz Chaim Men's Club, a group connected to Congregation Etz Chaim of Marietta. Their temple is a modern Conservative synagogue committed to blending tradition and change, an affiliate of the United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism.

Michael Weinroth from Temple 
Etz Chaim speaks at St. Ann’s
For many years, these Jewish and Catholic congregations have met, discussed and visited each other’s places of worship. Recently one of the members of the Etz Chaim Men's Club, as he described it, “visited with Father Ray Cadran, who helps coordinate the church's adult and youth education programs, hoping there might be members of the parish who had served as liberators or were the children of liberators of the camps. We were astonished to find that Father Ray, himself, was the son of such a person.” 
 
“His father had been in the United States Army and had been involved in the liberation of at least two camps in Germany. As Father Ray told his father's story, he added that his father's experience had in large measure helped form his own decision to enter the priesthood. Having heard this amazing story, he was asked if he would consider participating in our Yom HaShoah  program.”
 
In their August, 2011, newsletter, The Voice of Chaim, he described their impressions: “To say that Father Ray is a humble man is an understatement, because he responded that, while he would be honored to participate, he could not imagine what he could tell us that would be more memorable than our own stories. As many of us who were there on April 10, 2010, he not only spoke at our event, but he brought much of the crowd to tears with his beautifully told story.”

Read more A Tree of Remembrance

More Articles …

Gandalf’s wisdom for the new Cold War

Mark Wahlberg’s film about Fr. Long aims to inspire

We are All Missionaries — The Challenge of that Word

Prayer set in motion – Contemplatives in Action

At the origins of our universe

The devil is in the exquisite details of Denzel’s ‘Macbeth’

Our common humanity

Mary's Presence as Experienced in my Service in Mission

Thirty-One Days of Reconciliation—Lenten Daily Tasks

Book of Hours exhibit at the Getty illuminates the journey to eternity