The Spirit Rolls as River, the under appreciated metaphor of Pentecost.

What is below comes from my homily for the Vigil of Pentecost. It is meant to be delivered, rather than read, but I hope it is helpful regardless: 

 Readings: JL 3:1-5 PS 104:1-2, 24, 35, 27-28, 29, 30 ROM 8:22-27 JN 7:37-39

Where the story to the left happened. 

It was 2001, it was Pentecost, and I was in Mexico City at the Shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe. There, on the edge of the hill of Tepeyac, where tradition holds that Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego, I stood and looked out over the new basilica, and could hear the mariachi music wafting out on the breeze from the end of the Pentecost mass. There, where gardens are now planted to commemorate the miracle which confirmed the vision for the local bishop, I could smell the sweet perfume of the roses, and as a soft breeze came up the hill and mingled with the mist from a fountain nearby, I was refreshed against the heat of the day. It was in that moment, in a moment of unexpected prayer, that I first thought about becoming a Jesuit. Now, some 13 years later, on the eve of my first anniversary as a priest, I realize the truth, that that Pentecost was my Pentecost, that that was the moment which, after years being formed in the faith, of studying philosophy and theology, compelled me to take the next step. Like salve for a soul already burning, this moment gave me the courage to go forward.     

We all know the story of Pentecost, the one engrained in us from our youth where there is a rushing wind and tongues of flame descend upon the apostles, or maybe we are more in the Johanine tradition and we like the image of Christ breathing on the Apostles on the evening of Easter Sunday, and its connection to the Ruach of the Old Testament. We have Fire and Wind, the image that we don’t normally think of, however, is the one from tonight’s Gospel. The image of water. Perhaps, especially as we live our daily lives as followers of Christ and as temples of the spirit, for those who have had only a few short years (or year) of ministry, and for those who have had many years, the image of water, especially on a day like this one as Rome begins to heat up for the summer, is the better image. Water refreshes us and sustains us, water cleanses us, water gives life to the world and makes everything green and without it the world dries up and dies. This is what we know of the Spirit, the Spirit which refreshes and restores us, the Spirit which gives us life.

It is a Spirit which we know well because it is that Spirit that often works within us, even despite ourselves, when we are blocked in prayer, or perhaps even not praying much at all, it is that Spirit which, like water wearing down stone, can weather the hardness of our hearts and over time turn small channels into great canyons capable of bearing the fullness of God’s love. It is that spirit who, when we have borne the heat of the day in our old age refreshes us with new dreams, and when we are young, like a splash of water on our face in the morning, wakes us with new visions. It is that spirit which creates us anew and refreshes us, even if we think, as the psalmist writes, we are in danger of perishing and returning to the dust. 

 It is clear, though, that this is a spirit which is not just a salve for our souls. Creation groans in labor pains, ands we have seen more than our fair share in the world today of blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The Gospel call is clear that this water is meant to be a river which flows forth from each of us who believes. We are to be the conduit for that refreshment, that cleansing, that life which is supposed to come into the world. Pentecost is not simply about the descent of the spirit, it is our calling, and our challenge. The Spirit doesn’t descend on all of the world, or even on all of Jerusalem, but on those who were assembled in that upper room, a simple, small room built on a roof meant originally to provide refreshment for those who lived in the house below at the end of a long day. The Spirit which refreshes us chooses to go forth into the world through us. The great miracle of this day is that, in the strength of the spirit, we are called to be that miracle for the world. Just as we are given life, so we are called to go forward and give life, in abundance, to the world.

 Each of us has our moment on Tepyac, our moment in the cenacle, our moment where the spirit descended upon us and called us. For many it was the result of a long slow process, like a stream cutting through rock over millennia, for others it was a great rushing flood, yet each of us are called to be that channel, each of us are called to give life to a parched world, each of us are called to bear the spirit forth, and partake in its refreshing all things and making all things new.

Hope, But Not Change: President Obama Meets Pope Francis.

        Six years ago I, like many people in their twenties at the time, was swept up in the election of Barack Obama. Despite having some major misgivings as a Catholic about some of his policies, the idea of a leader running on a virtue itself, that of hope, was more than just intriguing, it was inspiring. Now six years later the 44th president of the United States will arrive here in Rome to meet with the 266th successor of St. Peter, Pope Francis, a man who has captured the imaginations of so many in the world and has brought back that word to our minds, hope.
Is there anything so infectious as hope? It is sadly possible that a person could go their whole lives without ever experiencing the love of another person, and it may well be that one never assents to faith, but hope is that well which springs up within us and impels us forward towards a future which is inexplicably already understood to be better than our present. Hope is that promise of the future which is not yet our own, yet which we desire to possess. Hope is also that fire that spreads quickly not just in our own hearts, but in the hearts of those around us.
I remember the morning of Obama’s first inauguration when I made my way with three good friends to the National Mall. It was so packed that we watched the whole thing from a jumbotron screen by the Washington Monument, over a mile away. Yet everyone in the crowd was joyful, and joy always seems to accompany hope. Everyone was kind, and kindness seems to always  accompany hope. Although Washington was overcrowded and cold, hope lit a fire in our hearts.
I remember March 13th of last year, when on a damp, cold, night I stood in St. Peter’s Square with a cheap, leaking, umbrella that I had bought at a gift shop on the Via della Conciliazione. I was cheering on a seagull sitting atop a smokestack along with all of the other people gathered in the square where, once again, I was watching things unfold on a jumbotron. At 7:05 in the evening a puff of grey, then white, smoke went up from that smokestack and the crowd went wild with joy, people helped each other up to the front of the square to be under the balcony, forming a canopy of umbrellas to keep each other dry in thousands of acts of kindness, and suddenly the cold wasn’t so cold, and the rain just a bit less damp when, an hour later, the skies parted to reveal the moon and stars above just as the curtains parted to reveal Pope Francis.

Post by Mike Rogers SJ.

It is no secret that Pope Francis and President Obama disagree fundamentally on some important issues, from Francis’s calls for peace in Syria when the President seemed ready to start air strikes to Obama’s insistence on the HHS mandate which the Church has consistently come out strongly against. What these two men disagree on is well known, but what doesn’t change is that word which has so often been used to describe them both, and the word that lives and breathes in each of us, hope. That may be what makes this Thursday important in the end, not the conversations between them, not the inevitable invitation on President Obama’s part for Pope Francis to visit the US in 2015, but that we might take a minute to remember the thing which unites them rather than divides them, and which unites us all along with them, hope.

Fr. Jorge’s First Year as the Pastor of St. Martha’s.

Daily Mass is at 7 am. Most Catholic parishes that have a weekday Mass at this hour have it for people who are going to work. The chapel of St. Martha’s is no different; many of the members of the congregation have jobs that need to be attended to first thing in the morning, and they often come for miles around to be there before they begin their day. At 6:40 am people are already lined up outside the door waiting to enter. In the winter months its still dark at that hour and the glow coming from inside lights the sidewalk and promises the warmth within. When the congregation enters just before 7, the staff in side welcome them warmly, give them a place to hang their coats, and show them to the chapel. Inside, one of the priests welcomes those gathered with a warm smile and a genuine happiness which is unmistakably real. This is the chapel at St. Martha’s, and they are happy that you are there. 

Precisely at 7am, if not a few seconds before, Fr. Jorge enters, makes the sign of the cross, and begins the mass. His prayerfulness and focus are clear. He listens to the word of God being proclaimed in the readings with a deep intensity and it is clear that he, himself, feels as convicted by the words of scripture as anyone else at mass. He rises from his seat after the Gospel to preach, and without notes offers a 6 or 7 minute reflection, during which everyone in the room somehow feels as if he may have been speaking directly to them. He then moves onto the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and it is almost as if you can see the weight and seriousness of what he is doing weighing on his shoulders. Make no mistakes, this is a priest who, as the rite of ordination for Catholic priests demands, knows what he is doing. When the Mass is ended, and he has removed his vestments, he comes and sits in the back of the chapel with the people in a few moments prayer and reflection, then his day has begun. 

My Mother and I outside of St. Martha's

Like many pastors he greets the people outside the chapel as they are leaving morning mass, but with more than just a handshake and a “have a nice day.” He spends a few moments with each person, he asks about their lives, he cracks jokes with them, he is playful with the children who are there with their parents, and he usually gives the culturally appropriate good bye of a kiss on each cheek to the women who were there. This is the moment that so many have waited for and it is more than just a brief moment, because in that moment Fr. Jorge is once again the pastor of St. Martha’s. That he is also Pope Francis, the Supreme Pontiff, Christ’s Vicar on earth, seems far less important to him than simply being a pastor at that moment. 

I have been asked often, as a priest living in Rome,  just what it is that has allowed Pope Francis to capture the hearts, minds, and imaginations of so many in his first year as Pope. I think it is summed up by the experience that I just described, when on one morning a few weeks ago I took my parents to Mass with Pope Francis in the Domus Sanctae Martha, the hotel where he lives inside the Vatican. It is neither in his erudition nor is it in his ability to play the crowd, and although comparisons are always odious, one could argue that Benedict XVI and John Paul II, respectively, were more talented than him in those areas. It may just be precisely because his gift is in being a pastor and because, as a pastor, he exercises a remarkable care for the individual before him, if only for a few minutes. It may be because, as a pastor, he genuinely wants to invite people into that experience of God’s mercy and love that he himself experiences. It is perhaps because, before he was Pope Francis and before he was Cardinal Bergoglio, he was and still is, Fr. Jorge, a pastor with his people, waking up early like so many other priests, to say daily mass at 7am. 

Remember that you are Dust!

“Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It always seemed morbid to me to say those words on Ash Wednesday. As a child they seemed foreboding, and reminded me of the haunted house at Disney World. As a teenager, like most teenagers, I wasn’t so easily convinced that I was made of dust. When I moved to Italy in my 20’s, I went to the famous "bone church" on the Via Veneto here in Rome, where in the crypt actual human skeletons welcome you with the words “as you are now, we were once, as we are now, so you shall be,” and I walked into the Capuchin Crypt in Palermo and was a bit overwhelmed by the decomposing corpses, still hanging from the walls wearing the clothing of the day. “remember that you are dust…” indeed.

Mine is not the same aesthetic sensibility as my Italian brethren as regards death, but those words, those simple words, “remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return,” are the best words that we could hear this time of the year. I remember one Ash Wednesday here in Italy when, while attending mass as a seminarian, I looked down at the marble floor of the Church that I was in and there above the skull and crossbones which marked the entrance to a crypt were the Latin words which are perhaps far too popular in contemporary culture, “Carpe Diem.” That is, of course the point, however. Reminders of our own mortality, like those words echoed as ashes are spread across our foreheads, are the challenge to seize the day, not with simple the capriciousness of the just passed “YOLO” (you only live once) fad, but rather to embrace today the genuine possibility of life fully alive and richly lived.

That we are dust is a reminder that our lives are fragile, and that the lives and hearts of those around us are as well. So we must tread lightly and walk joyously, spreading love for hate, peace for rancor, and healing for a world which is all too wounded. That we are dust is a reminder that in our material existence there is a limitedness, a boundedness which leaves the reality of who we are all too often far from the people that we wish to be, and that we are, ourselves, all too often far too vulnerable before the lesser angels of our nature and left needing the help of our friends, family, and indeed our God to press forward. Yet the reminder that we are dust, by reminding us of just this simple yet profound common reality of our existence, is the call to freedom and to patience, peace, and a humility within ourselves which can reconcile who we are in reality with whom we ideally wish to be.

That unto dust we will return, though, is the challenge. In a world in which springtime is (hopefully) about to be unleashed, in a world which is about to be teeming with life, and joy, and the hope which is reborn with the first full moon of the spring for people of the Judeo-Christian tradition, our returning to dust is a gauntlet thrown at our feet. Now is the time to cast off the darkness of our own hearts, as it leaves the world literally for the warmth and joy of summer. Now is the time to rid ourselves of the chains, addictions, and habits which hold us bound. Now is the time to repair those wounded friendships, and to remember once again the joy that we had in them. The time is now because we are returning to dust, and there is no other time.

This is a call that goes to people of all faiths and of no faith. This is a human call, it speaks not simply to Christian beliefs, but to all of humanity which understands that life is far too short, our time to love far to brief, our joy always far too limited. Now is the time, there is no other moment. The spring, which can never be held back, is coming. Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

NEWS FROM ROME... after a Hiatus

Hey everyone,  I took a bit of a Hiatus during the fall to get back into the books, but with the news that broke today from Rome, I decided to get back to a bit of reporting from the ground up, so here, with the help of my trusty iPod Camera, is the news direct from his Holiness, Benedict XVI himself... 22 new Cardinals.



Here are the names:
1. Msgr. Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples;

2. Msgr. Manuel Monteiro de Castro, Major Penitentiary;

3. Msgr. Santos Abril Y Castellò, Archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major;

4. Msgr Antonio Maria Veglio, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People;

5. Msgr. Giuseppe Bertelli, President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and President of the Governorate of the same State;

6. Msgr Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts;

7. Msgr JOÃO Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life;

8. Msgr Edwin O'Brien, Pro Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem;

9. Msgr. Domenico Calcagno, President of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See;

10. Msgr Giuseppe Versaldi, President of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See;

11. His Beatitude GEORGE Alencherry, Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the Syro Malabar (India);

12. Msgr Thomas Christopher Collins, Archbishop of Toronto (Canada);

13. Msgr Dominik Duka, Archbishop of Prague (Czech Republic);

14. Msgr Willem Jacobus Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht (Netherlands);

15. Msgr. Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence (Italy);

16. Msgr Timothy Michael Dolan, Archbishop of New York (United States);

17. Msgr. Rainer Maria Woelk, Archbishop of Berlin (Federal Republic of Germany);

18. Msgr John Tong Hon, Bishop of Hong Kong (China);

The Holy Father has also decided to raise to the dignity of cardinal a revered prelate, who carries out his ministry as Pastor and Father of the Church, and three worthy clergymen, who are distinguished for their commitment to serving the Church.

They are:

1. His Beatitude Lucian Muresan, Major Archbishop of Fagaras and Alba Julia of the Romanians (Romania);

2. Rev. Julien Ries, priest of the Diocese of Namur and professor emeritus of history of religions at the Catholic University of Louvain;

3. Fr. Prospero Grech, OSA, Professor Emeritus of various Roman universities and Consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith;

4. Fr. Karl Becker, SJ, Professor Emeritus of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Consultant for many years the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Two days following St. Ignatius.

Truth be told, I am too tired to write right now after two long days of tourism at Montserrat and then Manresa, following in the footsteps of St. Ignatius in northern Spain. Here, however, are some photos to share of our visit to these places.

I hope that you enjoy them!

Monserrat, The Shrine of our Lady, where St. Ignatius laid down the sword of a knight:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.765379955604.2237740.33302598&l=6d188c2bdc&type=1

Manresa, where he wrote the Spiritual Exercises:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.765593926804.2237808.33302598&l=f44cf407ca&type=1

(Disclaimer, I only friend people that I actually have met in person on Facebook for a measure of security and privacy. I am glad to share these two albums from Facebook with everyone, but please don't be offended if I don't respond to friend requests if we haven't met in person. )

The Road in Reverse.

The road from LaStorta was a journey that began for Ignatius in the foothills of northern Spain, near the town of Azpetia. Eventually, after journeys through Spain, the Holy Land, and France, Ignatius ended up at LaStorta praying in a small chapel by the side of the road in sight of the walls of he eternal city. Today I have arrived in Spain, along with the rest of my classmates at the Gesù to being to trace the Spanish part of that journey in reverse. We landed in Barcelona, are staying in Manresa, and eventually will make our way towards Loyola for our retreat and a mass with Fr. General. In these days we are retracing our steps, to find where the road began. Even as we, like Ignatius, approach the final moments leading up to the end of one journey, the journey towards ordination. This seems to be a constant theme of my summer, going back to the foundations of my family, going back to the foundations of my Order, and going back to the foundations of my vocation. That's a picture of me with Barcelona behind me, I have come to Spain for the "Arrupe Month," amidst the Jesuit pilgrimage sites. This time in Spain isn't just a pilgrimage, it is a time which the Society of Jesus sets apart to think and pray about what it is to be a priest. Heading towards ordination, it seems to be a blessed time to get back to basics.

I was talking to my spiritual director the other day and his advice was that we find God at the foundation of ourselves, and when we can genuinely appropriate God's presence there, when we can admit to the wonderful and fearful fact that God dwells and operates in each of us, we can finally come to the fullest realization of ourselves. To do that, though, we sometimes need to retrace our steps.

For St. Ignatius, just like for so many of us, there were wrong turns. I write this from the house built over the cave where it is said that he was in such despair that he contemplated suicide. He was also, even after his conversion, thrown into prison and because of stubbornness, threatened with excommunication. Somehow, he is a saint. I would suspect that his sanctity is born out of precisely this sort of moment, a moment of going back to the roots of who he was, and where his journey began. Once in his life he even went home after he had resolved to leave the world behind to set things right in Azpetia. I am sure that the incredible work that he did on the Spiritual Exercises, which he began in the house I am typing this from and finished in the house that I normally live in, were a recounting of those experience of God's trust and care in his life. As it is, he always reminds us to go back to earlier graces received when he writes about prayer.

So often things get confusing. There can be a million and one desires which flood our hearts, a billion worries and little cares. That's precisely when we need to follow the breadcrumbs back and take the road in reverse. That is when we need to get back to basics, and to the most basic thing, which is of course our relationship with God. This is not to get back to it in the hustle and bustle of daily life, sometimes we just need to get back to where it all began, drink it in, and be grateful for it. When we can do that, we can loudly proclaim with Mary that "The almighty has done great things for me, from this day forth, all generations will call me blessed," because then we can be bold enough to proclaim that God is actually working through us, and all of the other things, no matter how lost we may have been, in light of God's forgiveness and love, don't seem to matter much. So here I am on the road in reverse, and I have been going backwards all summer, to find my family, my order, my vocation, and hopefully along with Mary be able to really understands what it means to have my soul magnify the Lord.

Go raibh maith agaibh.

Dear Ireland,

Thank you.

Thank you for taking me in in a moment when I had gotten lost in the immensity of all that has happened in the past year and helping me get back to basics. Thank you for that reminder in your devotion to the Sacred Heart, and the need in that novena to rename what I want most, namely, to be a priest. Thank you for that moment in the Church of the Sacred Heart in Cork when in the middle of the novena when I could listen to the deepest desire of my own heart in the most profound of ways and say simply that I wanted to be a priest and asking the Lord to make that the case, so well aware of how much of God's grace would have to make that possible.

Thank you for your soft days, for the rain so gentle that you often wouldn't think of using a hood or an umbrella against it and ending up drenched as a result. Thank you for giving me a reminder of what God's grace is often like.

Thank you for helping me to see beyond Rome, and the small devout and pious circles that I run in. Thank you for reminding me that there is so much work to do and the answers which seem so easy sometimes need more work in a world which wants to believe but finds it so hard to sometimes.

Thank you for showing me that I am not really meant to live outside of Jesuit community, and making me grateful for it by my absence from it. In those two months living in Cork, faithful to my vocation while living apart from a regular community, reminding me why I need to be among the blessing of brothers who both support me and challenge me to become the person that God created me to be.

Thank you for my family, for the O'Connors, Rynns, McCarthys, Rogers, and most of all Hanleys. Thank you for reminding me through them that my vocation is no accident, that our family has for years had men and women who have dedicated their lives to God and his people. Thank you for reminding me that I am blessed to embody some of the best qualities of those people, and that I also share in some of their struggles in my own path. Thank you for overwhelming me with the generosity of Mary, Kathleen, Francis, and P.J. Glennon, who welcomed me, a stranger in all but name, into their homes. Thank you for these cousins who showed me the home of my family, and allowed me to rediscover Kilteevan, county Roscommon, as home. Thank you for their helping me to experience the deep faith of our family at Knock and Clonmanoise. Thank you for helping me to remember, through their example, the truth of the old saying "Hospes Venit, Christus Venit" (and thank you for helping me to learn how to read that in Latin.)

Thank you for that insane tour, for seeing things I had only dreamed of seeing since I was a kid. The Giant's causeway that I once saw in picture books, or the Cliffs of Moher from the Princess Bride movie. Thank you for a few quiet moments along the coast of the Dingle peninsula, and the moments of prayer on the North Coast. Thanks for letting me randomly meet one of my favorite Rock Bands and allowing me to hang out with them and talk about the things that matter most with them, like openess to God, poverty, and the search for meaning. Ireland. Thank You.
Slán go fóill.

The Five Pound Note and the Long Way Home

Many of us Americans wonder just exactly made our families come to the United States. For those of us who are just a couple of generations removed from the realities of immigration we might even be able to find out, and thanks to the immense generosity of my cousins in Ireland, I know now too. The answer is 5 pounds.

In Ireland in the 1800's the landlord, if they were going to evict you, might offer you 5 pounds to leave before they had to pay the sheriff to do it for them. It was a way for them to save money. This is what happened in the village of Kilteevan to my great great grandmother, Sara Hanley, and her family. Her dad took the 5 pounds, and they left for Providence, Rhode Island. Within a generation, that same family,who before would have had little more than a grade school education had college grads and doctors and college professors among them. They took the 5 pounds, went to Cobh, boarded a boat for the U.S, and never looked back. They didn't ever abandon their friends or family back in county Roscommon, they just kept moving forward. So often in our lives we look at desperate situations and think that there is no way out, but we are almost always wrong to think so. The truth is that forward through what seems to be a storm is often the way in which God's dreams for us are realized. Losing everything and having to move to another continent didn't seem like a joyful thing, but the truth was that my 4th great grandfather, John Hanley, accepted that 5 pound note and left, and in doing so accepted a new life that lead to mine. There was much to fear, I am sure, but the gift of courage that we receive from the Holy Spirit is the assurance that in God's love and providence, all will be well. So many of us sons and daughters of immigrant families are proof of that.

When I arrived in Roscommon, and to the town of Oran where some of the Glennons, my cousins in Ireland, live now they said "welcome home!" and that is, in the end, the truth of it. It we can just rely on God enough for courage we can know that even when we take that 5 pound note and leave the past behind, it doesn't mean the end of the things that matter most. The Hanley home is still there, as are the Hanleys, as is the promise. We would do well to mind the most common admonition in the Gospels, and not to be afraid.

Our Home is the Road....

One of the original companions of St. Ignatius once said that the home of the Jesuit is properly not the houses we live in, not the high gates of a benedictine monastery, or the secluded fields of a trappist abbey, but in the streets, mobile, and ready to go serve the Church and Gospel wherever we're needed.


While I will confess that most of my upcoming travel, of which there will be a great deal over the next month and a half or so, is focused around attending to myself and those closest to me, there is something soothing about getting back on the road for me. Cork, Roscommon, Dublin, Belfast, Galway, Dingle, Kerry, Dublin, Rome, Barcelona, Manresa, Pamplona, Javier, Loyola, Bilbao, Boston, Worcester, Rome... all of this between now and October 10. One of the people who knows me best once told me that I am so content never really settling down for good that I must have Gypsy soul, and this was before the recent Zac Brown Band song which uses that line.


The truth is, though, that I do have roots, and a home. It's not a place though, its the people in my life.  I am blessed to have those people, both Jesuits and non-Jesuits, all over the world.  More and more though, I think its just time to admit that I find that I am undeniably become more and more a Jesuit, more and more a man who is at home on the road.


I leave Cork tomorrow for a crazy amount of traveling, and I will be posting through the marvels of an iPad and free WiFi, but its time to get back on the Road. I am more than a little excited. Tomorrow, onto Roscommon...


Until then... Take it away Allman Brothers:

This Our Exile.

Our Lady of Coomatloukane, in Co. Kerry, Ireland. 

Today in the Church we celebrate Mary going home. The Assumption is something which I think we all understand deep down, particularly in this day and age, because it is about that longing for home. No matter who you are or what your beliefs are, I think we all understand that longing for home. 

So much of my decision to come to Ireland this summer, beyond the course in Latin that I am taking, was a decision to come home. To trace my family’s roots and hope to understand not just history, but who I am a little bit better. I have had a year in Italy to understand that part of my history and I think I understand myself more in light of that wonderful whirring existence. Here in Ireland too, the more time I spend the more I get why I react to different things in different ways. I have stood in the graveyard where generations of my mom’s family are buried, and I walked the streets that other O’Connors have before me in Abbeyfeale. This weekend I will go to Roscommon and there meet my cousins on my Dad’s side. There was something in this journey about a longing for home, and Ireland, and my family here, have been so incredibly gracious in providing that for me. 

There is a strange feeling though, being in these places which have defined my family, I still feel oddly not at home. This is not to say that I am ungrateful for these experiences, or that I am not content with my life. I very much am content, there have been so many blessings, so many new friends, so much life. Still though, I feel that exile. It definitely has something to do with not being in the United States in 1 year, 1 month, and 2 weeks. Truth be told, though, there was an itchiness to leave the US there to find something more that set me on this path in the first place. If I didn’t already feel the desire to learn something more in this way, I may have never asked to move to Europe. 

Which brings me to my point. In our world today, regardless of how much the internet, the media, and all of that other stuff connects us there are still so many of us that feel disconnected, so many of us looking for home. Today is our feast day. 

Today is our feast day because we can have a belief that there is a home to which we are headed, and that Christ has already opened it to us, because another human being like us is already there. 

Today is our feast because, for as much as the thought of home or talking to someone there is nice we know that it is never replaced by physically being there, as Mary is. 

Today is our feast because we know one of us who went before us, and still advocates for us. 

St. Augustine of Hippo once famously said in his confessions that “Our Hearts are restless until they rest in you oh God.” That’s home, the place where our hearts find rest and our exile is at an end. It would be wrong to make the Assumption a day where we make Mary seem kind-of-almost-like Jesus, but not quite. The fact that Mary is a human being like any of us gives us all hope. The fact that she is assumed to heaven body and soul affirms the goodness of our earthly body, and illustrates what we already know about going home and being physically present. That Mary is conceived without sin and plays such an pivotal  role in the history of salvation is why she goes before us, but in going before us, she is a sign of hope, that someday this exile will end for us too, because it already has for her. 

In 45 days, 22 hours, and 30 minutes I will touch down on an AirIberia flight from Madrid and be home in the US for the first time in well over a year. That exile will end, if only for 10 days. The truth is though that for those ten nights, like every night, I will pray “and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus,” because even in the city I once waxed romantic over, as the video I am reposting below displays, I still felt enough of that same exile there to keep searching. 

Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, pray for those of us who here in exile hope to follow you home someday. 

(A true story about this video. I had intended to make something like this anyway, but I definitely made it when I was at my most homesick last summer. I repost it here because I think, despite its overt cheesiness, that it gets at the sense of longing that I am talking about in the post above.) 

Relearning one of the beatitudes...

Why am I doing this? Why am I spending my summer struggling over Latin? Why do I need to learn another language? 

       There are just certain things that you need to do. You don’t particularly want to, they may not seem incredibly useful, but you just need to do them. Every academic subject has its thing. For pre-med i remember my Holy Cross friends fretting over organic chem.  In philosophy it was logic, we philosophers have never had much use for logic anyway. In theology studies a good number point to Canon Law as the beast to get past, and I may well discover that to be true in the coming year in Rome. Right now, however, it is Latin. 

University College, Cork. Where I am plugging away at
Latin. 

It is not that I don’t have a facility for languages, I speak or read 6 at least in part, and have some conversational ability in 3 of those,  but Latin just seems so peripheral to everything that I want to do or accomplish. Especially now, reading the Satyricon, which makes trashy reality TV like the Jersey Shore look like Sesame Street, I feel so far removed from anything useful. Even still, when I think about it I realize that the ways in which I will use Latin, even if I go onto study more in Theology after ordination, will not require excessive knowledge of the obscure 1st century idioms I am learning right now. 

Somewhere on the Ring of Kerry, in one of my thankfully
less studious moments. 

At this point, the study seems useless, except for one thing. The truth is that all too often it is easy today to see something that looks too difficult, too intense, and turn away. Sometimes the discipline of getting through it is unto itself its own reward, however. Sometimes when we can force ourselves pass the peripheral, less important, desires that we have it helps us to focus on what we really want. Many saints have called it the practice of mortification, and they had many sundry and often medieval ways of doing this.  (Many of which I don’t recommend.) The truth is though, that sometimes sticking with something which is unpleasant is precisely the sort of thing that makes us better able to understand just what we desire most. 

Case in point. I am here, in Ireland, for the summer. I would much rather go find a pub and listen to good traditional music just about every night rather than study Latin. I would much rather go out hurling (the traditional Irish sport that I have taken up in the past couple of months, not the gastronomic feat) every afternoon than translate from Petronious. Truth is, I would much rather do just about anything, including writing on this blog, than study Latin. It has  been a struggle not to write, or hurl, or go to the pub as often as I would like. Latin is sometimes, as it was tonight, a sheer endurance test. The truth is, though, that sometimes having to suppress those momentary desires for a much more profound one helps us to remember who we are. I find myself here in Ireland much more focused on the reality of what will happen in my life over the course of the next two years, and realizing just how deep that desire flows in me. With the peripherals stripped away, or forced to the background, the most true thing comes to the fore, which for me is the desire to be  priest. I am doing this because I wan to fulfill the University’s requirements, which will help me to become a priest. So I can’t go to the pub when I have class the next day, which is 6 days a week here. I can’t go hurling every afternoon. I have to do this and stick it out, even if it is a struggle to. Being forced to sit and struggle, or endure something unpleasant, for the sake of a greater desire can often make it clear to us just how much we want something. For St. Ignatius, when we can get in touch with that deepest desire we can also be sure we have been in touch with what God wants for us, who else would have placed such a desire on our hearts?

So sure, I am convinced that God smiles at my feeble attempts a picking up a new sport at 30, and he likely delights in the songs at the pub and a pint shared among friends. More importantly, putting these legitimate little joys aside, having to say no to them more often than I would like, and realizing the struggle that can be, has helped me, and I think can help all of us, get closer to what we want most, and understand how much we want it.  In rediscovering it we find a kind of joy that the pure of heart have always known for so long, they can put aside the other desires in their heart for the most profound of all, and that is likely why they see God. 

Happy Feast Day!

Today, July 31st, is the feast of St. Ignatius. To Celebrate, I thought I would repost an oldy, but a goody. A tour of the Rooms of St. Ignatius in Rome, inside my house, that I made last year. I post it with a promise that there will be a new one of the family home of St. Ignatius at the end of September. Anyhow, enjoy!


And Happy Feast! 

From the Emerald of the Sea.

At Blarney Castle... The famous stone is
behind the arch right above and behind me. 

The Road from LaStorta is a two way street. Just as easily as it can take one into Rome, as it bore St. Ignatius and the early companions, It can lead us out to the world beyond Rome. The truth is that for me Rome is a wonderful place, full of beauty, love, and joy. There for the last year I have prayed by the tombs of saints and sat at the feet of scholars. For the last year I have listened to the Pope in St. Peter's and talked with the poor on the Ponte Sisto. I love Rome, and I miss it, and I will be back to it for a new year soon enough. My life there, in no small part due to the friends that I have, is nothing short of blessing.

Rome isn't the whole of the world though, sometimes its grandest illusion is that because it is so large and so metropolitan that the entire world comes there to you. The truth is that it can be a much smaller world, particularly in Church circles, than one would think. So when the summer plans came up, I knew that I had to get out. There was a chance to learn Latin, of all things, here in Cork, Ireland, so I took up the chance to come to this town, where my paternal Grandmother's family was from, to learn the ancient language of the city that I normally live in on the other side of the continent. It seems a little strange that one who lives in sight of the Forum would come to Ireland to learn how to translate the speeches Cicero delivered 200 yards from his house, but the course is excellent and taught in English, so here I am. 

            

There were, of course, other reasons for wanting to come to Ireland. I am proudly Italian American, but I am also Irish American. For the past year I have learned Italy's language, been through its towns, learned its history, and of course eaten its food. Now in Ireland, I am seeing where the rest of my family came from, meeting distant cousins, taking up Hurling (a bit), and learning its history.  It seems clear to me, though, that somehow my soul, my being, is Irish, Italian, and American. Somehow I am the result of so much more than randomness, and that's true for each of us. If this great great grandparent had more money and never had to leave home, if someone missed a boat, if someone died in a war, or from famine, somehow I don't exist.

          

 More than just being the result of those moments which I call providential, but which someone else could dismiss as luck, we are the product of love. Leaving Ireland and leaving Italy wasn't a choice against home. I feel so at home here and so alive in Italy because, in so many ways, the old ways of being survived from the old countries. The food in my mother's kitchen is Italian, the ways in which we communicate on my father's side of the family are clearly Irish. As kids we marched in the St. Patrick's day parade in March and heard about La Befana at Christmas. My brother and I know both as many Italian Opera Arias as we do Irish Folk Songs (though admittedly he knows more on both counts.) 

Leaving home was, in many respects love for lives that didn't exist, leaving home was for the promise of something better not just for them, but for their children and their children's children, down to those of us in the present generation.  So here I am in Ireland, after a year in Italy, and the thing that is most apparent to me is simply this, we are loved into being long before we are ever born by people that we will never meet in this life, and that existence is one of the greatest gifts of all. 

We hold their traditions and keep the memories of their pasts out of gratitude, respect, and even love, but more, being here now and living in Italy, we can love them and be more grateful knowing what beauty they left behind... 

Take it away Mr. Cash: 

Remembering a legend.

“So, do you know Fr. Sheehan?” I once asked of my students from South Boston when I was a teacher at Boston College High School. “Yes,” he replied, “whenever my mom makes me go to confession I hope that I always get him.” Living in Boston for the three years before I moved to Rome, I was blessed to live close to my cousin, Fr. Dan Sheehan. The man was something of a legend in Southie, everyone seemed to know him and love him. If, however, I ever mentioned that to him he would almost always use some colorful language to tell me to shut up.

Fr. Dan, Ready for St. Patrick's day.
Picture taken by my brother, Fran
Rogers. 

 Meanwhile, among a good number of the priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, I would mention that he and I were cousins and I would almost invariably get a somewhat different reaction. “Really, you’re related to HIM??” they would ask. The exception to this rule was usually the men that he lived with at St. Brigid’s rectory and among his friends. When his name came up, particularly among those who were, or at least thought they were, important in the Archdiocese there would be a slight roll of the eyes, or maybe a little bit of a sigh. They would never say a bad word about him, mind you, but it was always a the same reaction.

            The truth is that this all made sense. Fr. Dan was more at home with a Hot Dog at Sully’s Restaurant on Castle Island than at an important dinner table in the Chancery. He would have much rather preferred a walk down the Sugar Bowl causeway at Castle Island to a walk down the aisle at the cathedral. He much preferred a good joke to some lofty theological discourse. The truth is that I always had the sense that to him that the other stuff didn’t matter much. The high and lofty could be cast down from their thrones, for all he cared, he was just there with the people. There wasn’t ideology or some sort of statement behind it, it was just who he was. This way of being had become so fully a part of him that when he preached it often seemed that it could have just as easily been anyone else from South Boston preaching. He knew and loved the people and became, even in his retirement, one of them.

            One of the things that made him most beloved was the sense that he didn’t care much about judging people, and he loved people where they were and for who they were.  He knew enough about those people who surrounded him, first in the missions of Peru, and then among his working class parish in Peabody and eventually in retirement in Southie, that he knew not to judge them for the things that they had done or situations that they found themselves in. You knew that he had listened to them well when he could preach and mirror back to them the Gospel in their own context, and show them a God who was full of love, mercy, and compassion who often times in Fr Dan’s preaching seemed to have their face and walk with them on  East Broadway or Day Boulevard. He knew enough not to demand that anyone change as a precondition of his caring for you, and he was wise enough to know when certain individuals were incorrigible. He just loved them anyway, and as best he could he rejoiced in their joys and shared in their sorrows. He didn’t have time to judge, he was too busy loving people in the genuine and deep way that made him one of them.

            I can think of only one group of people that he didn’t have much time for, those who loved all but themselves too little. He didn’t have time for those who would put themselves in a place of superiority, and he didn’t have much time for you if that was who you were. It was the place where the genuine nature of his love was actually most manifest. When the abuse crisis broke in the US he was one of the ones brave enough in his own Archdiocese to say publicly that there was a crisis of leadership and that those responsible needed to hold themselves accountable. When he knew people who seemed to be campaigning for positions of authority in the Church rather than being pastors to the people of God, he wasn’t afraid to call them on it. When he felt that the institutional Church wasn’t meeting some need of the people of God, he wasn’t afraid to write what I have heard both from him and others were numerous letters. He didn’t care that it made him unpopular sometimes, or that it could have led to some sort of sanction, he just followed his conscience and didn’t let pride get in the way of doing what was right.

            When I was young, I remember calling Fr. Dan “Fr. Clown,” because he was always making us laugh, even as kids. He lived with a joy that was contagious, and he didn’t care if it was at times even bordering on the mildly goofy. On St. Patrick’s Day in South Boston, he would wear a green clerical shirt, green pants, and a green fleece. Where he got that color of a green clerical shirt, I will never know. There he would be though, outside the parish with the rest of the city watching the parade pass by. He was the first priest I knew and and I never knew him to be somber, downcast, or overly serious. We never felt distant from him and we never felt like he was set apart from us, even as kids. I suppose now, looking back that that image of priesthood helped me to begin to form my own attitudes towards it, and made me think first and foremost about the possibility that this could be a life filled with joy.

            Fr. Dan passed away this past Saturday, and I was awoken to a call via skype at 5:00 in the morning here in Ireland with the news. Of all the places I could be to get this news its seems somehow strangely right to be here in Ireland. His last words addressed to me were to go to find the places where our family came from. So I will go to Abbeyfeale this weekend, and I will pray for him and for all of the Sheehans, and Rynns, and O’Connors. More than anything else, I will remember that far more than the great and grand holy sites of Rome, or even Knock here in Ireland, this place where we came from would be a pilgrimage for him. To him it would be ground holier than St. Peter’s because it is the ground where we came from, because it is the ground of the real world, and that is after all where he found life, joy, and God.  

A Peak Into Where I Live

I am consistently impressed by the talent of the guys that I live with. Pawel Kowalski, a Polish Jesuit in my year here at the College, put together a great website for us. I thought I would share that link with you!  The International College of the Gesu'

NJN Exclusive: Jesuit Shares his Experience of Pope John Paul II’s Beatification

NJN Exclusive: Jesuit Shares his Experience of Pope John Paul II’s Beatification

So this is likely the last thing that I will write on the beatification, but here is a little reflection after the fact on the whole event on the National Jesuit News Blog.

A week later and...

A video to give you some idea of how the basilica feels in the aftermath of the beatification.

The tomb itself, with some flowers left by it. 

The area immediately surrounding the tomb of Bl. John Paul II is still brimming with people, such that at St. Peter's they have actually set up a special set of barriers to channel people through and not block people wanting to go up the other aisles. It is interesting to me that when you enter the basilica there are now very few people in front of Michelangelo's pieta, which had until now been the principle attraction upon immediately entering the basilica, and huge crowds in front of the altar of St. Sebastian. The word that I hear from some friends who have tried is also that booking a morning mass in the chapel of St. Sebastian has now become more difficult than booking a morning mass in the Clementine Chapel, the closest to the tomb of St. Peter himself. 

The crowd gathered around the tomb..

The placement itself is also interesting in that the tomb is in the chapel between the Pieta and the Blessed Sacrament chapel, and the closest chapel that one could be buried in to the holy door where the new Blessed inaugurated the Jubilee of 2000, which he held to be a high point of his pontificate. From there, as well, you can look across the nave of the basilica to the tomb of St. Pius X and up the side aisle to the tomb of Bl. John XIII. It's interesting too that Bl. Innocent XI was moved from this altar to the altar of the Transfiguration, much closer to the main altar. I noticed there today that Innocent seemed to have more people stopping by his tomb. 

JPII's grade school report card. (click on picture to expand.. the grades
are legible.)

       On the left of the main Basilica, in a space usually occupied by a bookstore, is the exhibit commissioned by Pope Benedict to mark the event of the beatification. I saw a fair number of things which made me think, but as the semester here in Rome begins to press down on me in the final weeks before exams one thing struck me in particular.  One of the most interesting things that I saw Bl. JPII's grade school report card, and I thought it might bring some solace to those approaching the end of an academic semester or those preparing for exams that even JPII didn't get straight A's, though he was obviously no slouch. So, corraggio to all of my fellow students out there, we don't need to be perfect to be blessed...