We Would Love
to Keep in Touch!
On Prayer
Anyone familiar with the message of La Salette recognizes the call to prayer as one of the major elements emphasized there. Like all the basic themes of Our Lady's message, this call to prayer has its basis in the New Testament. Ultimately, it is part of the drama of the gospels, leading us back to the person of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, then, finds himself or herself grappling with prayer's place in life.
Blessed Pope John Paul II
A True Model for Religious Missionaries
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A missionary strategist of the highest caliber, John Paul II sincerely believed that the gospel must be preached to all people around the world. In his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, the Pope says,
In Redemptoris Missio he reminds us that “An essential characteristic of missionary spirituality is intimate communion with Christ.” From contemplation a missionary gets the strength and courage for action. |
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Travel and Learning
At times when I travel, I feel like I’m a cast member of the original 1914 motion picture serial, “The Perils of Pauline,” as I deal with the occasional challenges of visiting new and fascinating sites and meeting people of different cultures and languages. But I just love it all!
Aging Gracefully
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To this day I see my mother as a wisdom figure in my life. She was a farm girl with 10 other siblings. In her situation, having endured the depression, she often had to be able to fend for herself. She knew well who she was and consequently could converse easily with rich and poor, male and female, old and young. She kept both sides of our family together by her common sense and easy, cheerful manner. Her 91 years were spent doing good, even in the nursing home in her waning years. She truly grew old gracefully. I have met few others with her native wisdom and likeable, down-home nature.
I learned many lessons from her. One was: “Make sure to accept yourself as you are and others as well.” Don’t waste your time trying to make others think you are better than you really are. In fact, you can only be who you are.
A second was: “Get to know what you don’t know. Then you’ll become really intelligent!” Although my mother didn’t say it, I remember the clever saying, mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” The truth is that we can learn a lot from others.
A third piece of wisdom I learned from her example: “It’s never too late to learn more.” She went back to school at the age of 41 to be trained in the fledgling computer industry. She learned how to program the then-huge and bulky computers.
Living and Dying and Rising
Recently I was speaking to a friend who said, “You know what impresses me about Jesus' death and resurrection? — the continuity: Jesus was able to give up his life on the cross for us because that is the way he lived his life. Everything he did was in keeping with the Father's will.” I asked my friend if he would mind my sharing that insight with you. He said, “Fine; as long as I don't have to write anything!”
So, let us consider this insight, for so often we forget that the Risen Lord and the earthly Jesus are not two separate persons, no matter how different the mode of existence. And perhaps there is something here that touches our lives as well; for we have been called sharers in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the time of our baptism. What does this mean?
Reconciled to Myself
The Difficult Task
We live in an age where anxiety is high and few people enjoy true peace of mind. Fears about the high rate of crime, pollution of the environment and the possibility of a nuclear war are well-founded and give rise to deeper questions about where true peace can be found.
Some years ago an unknown author penned a wish that has since become known as the Desiderata Prayer. A friend of mine once gave me a copy of that prayer as he struggled to be at peace with himself in the face of a losing battle with cancer. "Go placidly," it says, "amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence." To live amid the noise and haste and also be in touch with the peace that is known in silence is no easy task.
The frustrated desire to be at peace with oneself often exists in a veiled way. Some psychologists suggest that we are often not aware of it until we enter our middle years and experience some kind of crisis. Ironically, the way to true inner peace requires some kind of struggle.
It has seemed to me at times that it is easier to pray for world peace than it is to pray for personal peace. The areas where the world is not at peace are easily identifiable, and that is half the battle in trying to find a solution. Nonetheless, the peace we hope for in a global way remains as elusive as the peace we pray for in a personal way. When I think of that fact, I am led to wonder about what Jesus meant when he promised us “a peace which the world cannot give (John 14:27).”
Laughter is a Gift From God
My father had limited education in the early 1930’s and only went to the third grade. Yet I noticed that his uncommon wisdom and cheerful nature far outshone his lack of formal education.
I remember as a child that regularly we’d have relatives and friends over our house. I especially can envision how my father’s eyes would sparkle brightly and his round belly would shake when he told the latest good joke that he heard from the guys at work or from a T.V. comic. He had a genuine talent for remembering just how to phrase the comic story or joke. His face would light up and turn red as he got closer to the punch line and then laughter erupted from everyone.
I really enjoyed his gift of laughter and I could tell he just loved to make people laugh. It was one of his true gifts to our family and myself – to help people truly enjoy themselves, to let go and laugh.
This Parish is a Circus!
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| Photo from Houston Chronicle of Fr. Jack Toner, M.S. |
Many of us may have heard such a statement made about various parishes. We may even – heaven forbid! – have thought something similar about our own parish. However, in the case of Fr. John Toner, M.S., this was the literal truth. The following article is excerpted from a story written twenty years ago by Burke Watson 
of the Houston Chronicle, and is reprinted with the author's permission. The sections in brackets are from an article by Kay Urtz and are reprinted with permission from the Catholic Bulletin of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Your run-of-the-mill clergyman might recoil when faced with such a formidable set of lips as those of Kismet the camel, but for the Rev. John Toner, this is just another day in his parish. (Fr. John and Kismet are pictured on left.) Kismet and her fellow ships of the desert, as well as elephants, tigers and zebras, are as commonplace to him as the steeple on a church would be to another pastor.
Toner, a Roman Catholic priest better known as Father Jack, has been living in such exotic surroundings since April, 1983, when he became the chaplain for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Justice and Peace Encounter
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| Modern skyline of Córdoba, Argentina |
This is my personal experience of the La Salette International Justice and Peace Encounter held on June 6-17, 2011 in Córdoba, Argentina.
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| Map indicating the state of Santiago del Estero, Argentina |
Our First Week
Monday: Welcome Mass
La Salette Missionaries from around the world and from the Region of Argentina/Bolivia gathered at the Regional House in Córdoba, Argentina, on Monday June 6th as they arrived for the International La Salette Encounter of Justice and Peace. Dennis Loomis, Marcel Schlewer, Antonio Abuan and Norman Farland flew in from their respective countries. From the Region of Argentina the participants were Jim Weeks, Fernando Altamiranda, Pedro Battistini, David Cardozo and Jacob Vettathu (from India, serving in Argentina since 2008).
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| Fr. Dennis Loomis, M.S. (center left) with La Salette International Encounter Group |
After a delicious mid-day meal prepared by Brother Pedro Battistini, everyone traveled to the city center, to the retreat house of the Pias Discípulas where the encounter would take place. An excellent translation system had been rented and set up. Brother Moses Rueda and I were the two translators.
We were ten participants at the opening Mass presided by Superior General, Fr. Dennis Loomis, M.S. During supper three more participants arrived: Meme Rakotondraibe of Madagascar and Pedro Sertoli and Edegard Silva Junior from Brazil. As Superior of the Region of Argentina, I offered words of welcome; Fr. Dennis welcomed everyone on behalf of himself and Alfredo Velarde, the two La Salette Missionaries responsible for organizing the event.
Sinners Anonymous
I was thinking not long ago about the various “Anonymous” organizations — Alcoholics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc. — and how they have changed the lives of people I have known. Then the brilliant idea came to me: why not start a Sinners Anonymous!
Maybe we could get someone like the tax collector in the Gospel passage quoted on the opposite page. He could get more of his kind together and they in turn could invite murderers and thieves, arsonists and rapists, all manner of persons who might be able to change their lives through “S.A.” Each of us might well be able to suggest more than a few names for membership.
Sadly, among them would be some juveniles, kids who have run away from home and thought they were tough enough to make it in the big city. All too soon they found themselves with nothing. If they did not turn to thieving they were “hired” by someone who gave them “steady work,” work beneath the dignity of any human being, let alone a child (more often boys than girls!) thirteen or fourteen years old. And certainly their "employers" could join this new “Anonymous” organization.