Category Archives: Community of Sant’Egidio

Accompanying one another toward Easter: the Parish and the Community of Sant’Egidio

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Community of Sant'Egidio, Uncategorized

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emmausA friend of mine in the Community of Sant’Egidio has asked me to reflect upon this past Holy Week and Easter Sunday in the parish and how the community accompanied the parish in its celebration.

“Accompanied,” I believe, is the proper word. Parishes by their very nature are living realities that are grounded in faith and their own particular history, tradition and makeup.  St. Dominic Parish is no exception to this.  Every parish has a living history that should be honored for what it has achieved yet also continually nourished into future growth.  No movement within the Church should seek to replace or even replicate the living reality of the parish.  That being said, we all help one another along in the journey of faith and it has been my experience that the Community of Sant’Egidio has many rich gifts to offer that a parish can benefit from both in the celebration of Holy Week and throughout the year.  In order to be manageable though the focus of this reflection will be solely on Holy Week.

For full disclosure, I believe it important to also state that my own discipleship and priesthood has been effected by my encounter with and involvement in the Community of Sant’Egidio and, that as pastor of St. Dominic parish, I bring this influence with me into the parish. The pastor of a parish does have a unique role is helping to set the atmosphere of a parish.  It is not the sole influence on a parish but it is one that should be acknowledged.  For example, one of the things I find truly good and right about the Community of Sant’Egidio is a healthy relationship between priests and laity.  These two groups are neither in competition nor are they set apart and, I believe, neither should they be viewed so.  I bring this perspective with me into the parish.  I am willing to work with the people of a parish as fellow disciples and I believe that people notice this and appreciate it.  Yes, priests have specific roles and the pastor does have specific duties and responsibilities but these are best lived within the whole context of a community seeking discipleship together even as it may make things more laborious at times.  Frankly, I believe that the priest needs to avoid the common temptation of playing the hero and the people need to avoid the temptation of seeking to make the priest the hero as a way of avoiding their own responsibility.  We are disciples together.

As we began Holy Week 2016, I shared with the St. Dominic community the thought that our Lord greatly desires to spend these days with us. In the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel, we find expressed a great longing and even tender love on our Lord’s part to be with his disciples and prepare them for what is to come even as his own hour approaches.  This is a perspective firmly rooted in the gospels and an awareness that the Community of Sant’Egidio maintains.  There is a deeper movement to Holy Week than that of us going about our rituals professing our belief, together yet isolated at the same time.  Christ himself gathers us in and he gathers each one of us.  Christ wants to spend these days with all of his disciples and with each disciple.  We are not forgotten and we are not disposable.  We are each remembered by Christ in Holy Week and we are each wanted by Christ.  He greatly desires to spend these days with each of us.

Within the above mentioned deeper context of Holy Week there were three particular moments that the Community of Sant’Egidio accompanied St. Dominic Parish these days. The moments were not “Sant’Egidio only” but were a joint accompanying between the parish and the community.  The three moments were Mercy Palms on Palm Sunday, the Prayer for the Martyrs and the ongoing relationship with our sister parish in Blantyre, Malawi.  I would like to reflect a little on each aspect.

In a way to live the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Marco Impagliazzo (the president of the Community of Sant’Egidio) invited all the groupings of Sant’Egidio worldwide to live Palm Sunday as a demonstration of mercy. In the spirit of Pope Francis, we were invited to take the palms outside the walls of our church as a visible sign of God’s love and mercy for the poor and forgotten in our society.  At St. Dominic’s we decided to do this by making close to 150 palm crosses and taking them as a gift to our friends at Holston Manor Nursing Home.  We gathered on Palm Sunday afternoon with a few of our friends in the day room of Holston Manor.  We had a simple ceremony with a reading of the gospel and blessing of the palm crosses.  Those present had some social time together and then after a while our group divided up and we took the palm crosses throughout the nursing home, offering them to every resident we met as well as staff members.  It was a simple gesture but a gesture that said “you are not forgotten”.  The residents were truly grateful.  In this simple act, St. Dominic Parish and Sant’ Egidio began Holy Week together by going out to the poor and forgotten in a gesture of mercy.

On Monday night of Holy Week, St. Dominic Parish with the Sant’Egidio Community offered the Prayer for the Martyrs. This prayer is an annual remembering of our Christian brothers and sisters who have offered their lives for the gospel within the past year and in the recent past.  This was the second year that this prayer was offered at St. Dominic Church.  This prayer is very meaningful and beautiful.  The Prayer for the Martyrs fits quite well within the first few days of Holy Week and helps to bring a deeper awareness and connection with our fellow Christians who are experiencing persecution for their faith in Christ.  Prayer is powerful and it is a good and important thing for the Church to gather in prayer and to remember that the names of our brothers and sisters are not forgotten and are precious to our Lord.

In the fall of 2015, St. Dominic Parish began a sister parish relationship with St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Blantyre, Malawi – a church staffed by priests of the Community of Sant’Egidio. St. Dominic’s is currently raising funds that will enable to parish and school in Malawi to build housing for teachers that will, in turn, allow the school to attract good teachers and make sure that classes do not have to be cancelled due to transportation difficulties during the rainy season.  We believe that the best way we can help to have a long term impact is to strengthen education possibilities in the local community.  Our parish youth coordinated a fund drive during the season of Lent for the school at our sister parish.  The presence in friendship of our sister parish was expressed during Holy Week through photos from Malawi shared via social media as well as a note from Fr. Ernest, the pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish.

We do accompany one another along the journey of faith and this is especially true during Holy Week. I can only speak to my experience with Sant’Egidio and the parish, but I do believe that the movements within our Catholic Church have great gifts to share with our parish communities and vice versa.  We all mutually benefit from this sharing and accompanying.  We help one another along.  Together, St. Dominic Parish and the Community of Sant’Egidio, celebrated a Holy Week where we were both gathered in by our Lord and sent forth to proclaim the truth of the resurrection and God’s love!

I wish this reflection to be a beginning of a dialogue so I encourage friends both within the parish structure and within Sant’Egidio to share your thoughts through comments. I would enjoy hearing from you.  Here are a few question for reflection that might help begin the process:

What do you find life-giving about your parish? What do you find life-giving about your experience with a movement within the Church?

How was Holy Week celebrated in the context in which you found yourself? What was profound about the celebration and what might have been limited?

How might movements “accompany” parishes both during such times as Holy Week but also throughout the year? How might parishes benefit from this accompanying?  How might movements benefit from this accompanying?

Francis: Pope of the Periphery

30 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Church, Community of Sant'Egidio, periphery, poor, Pope Francis

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Pope Francis is on the cover of “Rolling Stone”.  I guess this is a good thing.  He has certainly caught the imagination of many people.  
For the record, I am a Pope Francis fan – just as I have been a Pope Emeritus Benedict fan and Bl. John Paul II fan – the popes during my lifetime.  I am a fan of the papacy and how each man, weak and limited in his own humanity as he is, brings his own gifts and personality to this institution and it is amazing to see how the Holy Spirit works through each one.  It does no good and, in fact, is a disservice to the Church to fall into a “red state”/”blue state” mentality when it comes to the papacy and the current inhabitant of the office.  The papacy transcends such misguided and ultimately dull attempts at division. 
Recently I was at a church meeting and much was being said about Pope Francis – specifically his simplicity and his call to help the poor.  I agree the Pope Francis has certainly highlighted the poor in his pontificate but I think his challenge goes further and I wonder if this is being picked up on or glossed over and, if so, why?  
Through words and deeds (many of the latter going viral in the visual world of social media), Pope Francis is preaching not just help for the poor but the willingness to go to the poor.  Picture his embrace of the disfigured man in St. Peter’s square.  This, I think, is a key element to his appeal.  Pope Francis is certainly not opposed to the important work of the parish or Church relief and charitable agencies but neither does he want these to become an end or a wall of separation.  I do not think that the Pope would be satisfied if he heard the following statement, “Yes, I support the poor.  I give to my parish and Catholic Charities and they help the poor.”  I think our Pope would respond by saying, “Yes, that is good but you also go to the poor.”  It seems that our current pope does not like any form of “middle-men”; whether they be social, organizational or ecclesial.  
Choices and even success have unintended consequences.  This being understood, might an unintended consequence of the success of the Church’s relief and charitable organizations be that they can help bolster the illusion (maybe even desire) of being a step removed from the poor and needy?   “I can give to the poor yet remain comfortable in my own bubble.”  “Yes, there are poor people but there are people whose work it is to see to their needs.”
I find it helpful to apply a term to the pope that I recently heard Prof. Andrea Riccardi (founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio) use; that term is periphery.  Pope Francis is a pope of the periphery.  This should come as no surprise.  The pope himself made allusion to this when he first walked out on the balcony of St. Peter’s to tell the whole Church that the cardinals of the conclave went to the far corners of the world to find the next bishop of Rome!  They went to the periphery.
Every city, every town, every society has a periphery.  It is where the poor live.  It is where people are marginalized and de-humanized.  It is the place often overlooked and forgotten and also where people fear to go.  Pope Francis is inviting the Church to a gospel awareness that it is just not enough to send money or aid or prayers or good intentions to the periphery.  We must go there ourselves!  Why?  Because Christ is there and wherever Christ is the disciple must follow. 
It has been my experience – limited as it is – that the periphery provides (when encountered consistently and authentically) a spiritual antidote to the stultifying effects of worldviews and ideologies turned in on themselves – which are multitude in our day and age.  The periphery can awaken one to the wonder of the Kingdom of God rather than the merely comfortable!  Again, to paraphrase some insights by Prof. Riccardi, in the periphery we learn that contrary to the dictates of the economy we do not have to substitute competition and rivalry for living together in friendship.  In the periphery we realize that the true history of the world often runs hidden and deep rather than in the illusion of the stages of the rich and powerful.  In the periphery hope can be found, take root and grow.  
The Church must allow herself to be evangelized by the periphery and the poor.  They know the suffering Christ.  
Last night, in the midst of the latest winter storm to hit the eastern U.S., members of the Community of Sant’Egidio in New York City took a warm meal and friendship to their homeless friends on the streets.  These men and women are not spiritual elites, they are not heroes.  They are simply disciples seeking to live their faith honestly and joyfully in friendship.  Wherever Christ is, there is life and wherever Christ is, the disciple must follow.  Pope Francis, as successor to Peter, knows this and he is pointing it out to the whole Church.  Hopefully, we will listen and respond to his invitation to the periphery.                                

Anniversary of ordination and some lessons learned

03 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Community of Sant'Egidio, gratitude, Ordination anniversary, priesthood, thanks to God

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On June 3, 1995 I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.  These years have been and continue to be an amazing adventure!  Over these years I have been confessor, teacher, parochial vicar, pastor, youth ministry director, vocation and seminarian director, university chaplain, confidant, counselor, committee chairman, pilgrim, retreat director and friend.  I have experienced people automatically putting me on an unrealistic pedestal just for being a priest as well as people scorning, ridiculing, trying to convert me and automatically assuming things about me just for being a priest.

A couple of constants throughout my ministry have been building projects and working with youth and young adults.  At my first assignment at All Saints Church in Knoxville I watched (and learned) as the multi-purpose building and rectory were built followed in short order by the church building itself.  At Knoxville Catholic High School I assisted as the community left the old school and moved to a new property across town and I had a role in the design of the school chapel.  When I arrived at St. Mary Church in Athens, TN as pastor I stepped into the design phase of the new church building project.  In the course of five years we built the new church and rectory, literally picked up and moved the classroom building to the new property and sold the old property leaving the parish debt-free.  In the course of my time at the Catholic Center at ETSU one focus I have had has been the renovation of the chapel and I can honestly say that I think it looks quite good and is a place of prayer and worship.  But, even more than the building of structures, I have worked in the building and strengthening of Christian community. 

Except for the couple of years focusing on the building needs at St. Mary Church in Athens my ministry has always had the component (if not outright focus) of working with youth and young adults.  During these years I have been in the role of parish youth minister, diocesan youth ministry director (twice), high school chaplain and teacher (now twice) and college chaplain (now twice).  My whole priesthood has been lived under the scandal of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and in a time when many priests express fear and worry of being too close to young people.  For whatever reason I have been called back again and again to this ministry and I have chosen to say “yes” and remain with our young people.  It has been a blessing.

My priesthood has been blessed, strengthened and perhaps even saved through the Community of Sant’Egidio.  In a way that I can only describe as providence I met this community and now cannot even consider my life of faith apart from the community and their strange notion that yes, lifelong friendship is possible especially friendship with the poor!  This community has helped me to name and clarify rumblings in my own soul and heart regarding the true work of the priest and the disciple of Christ.  I have seen the danger of priest solely as CEO/administrator and I do not want that.  I want to be a priest – a man whose whole life is rooted in the mystery of Christ and who lives and who acts in the ways of Christ.  The community has helped me to see that there is a different way to live priesthood and discipleship and they have helped me to recognize that Christ is indeed encountered in faithful friendship with the poor. 

Here are some things that I have learned in my years of priesthood:

It is not about me. This is freeing realization when all is said and done.  The job of “Savior of the world” has already been taken and God is bringing about his Kingdom – end of story.  I have my part to play and there is certainly work to do but the final result is not in question.  This realization allows one to enjoy where one is at and also not think too highly of oneself.  It also helps lead one into the grace of obedience and its wisdom that the world cannot understand.     

It is the basics and it is the Gospel that truly matter.  In my years as a priest I have seen and participated in a number of different programs, drives and activities … and some of them even worked!  But when all is said and done – at least in my experience – it all comes back to the basics of the Christian life: serving and loving, proclaiming the Scriptures, breaking the bread and being a community in Christ. 

To love Christ one must also love the Church.  Warts and all, Christ loves his bride, the Church.  I have a deep sorrow for those who cannot recognize this truth.   

The Gospel can never be advanced by manipulation.  Manipulation, in the name of Christianity does occur.  I have seen it.  It might get immediate results but it leaves long lasting wounds and resentment.  God’s measure of success is not the world’s measure and part of growth in faith is to learn God’s measure. 

The poor move us beyond politics.  The poor help us to get real about a lot of things and help us to get beyond the “polarizations” that so much time and energy in our world is wasted upon – not an idea of the poor nor the poor as clients or the poor as a source of service credits but the poor as friends and as brothers and sisters.
  
Be human.  No one will care how much you know until they know how much you care.  God did not disdain becoming human in every sense but sin; why should we?

Good, Better, Best.  This is a philosophy I learned from Fr. Anietie Akata.  If you come to a place or situation which is not good then work to make it good.  If it is good then work to make it better.  If it has been made better then work to make it the best.  It is a good philosophy to live by. 

The love of Christ.  Just recently while in prayer, sitting before an icon of the face of Christ, I was brought to a deeper awareness of God’s love.  It seems that the journey of faith is a journey of coming to know in ever-deeper ways this love.  God continually pours forth his love and this is truly at the heart of all creation.

I give thanks to God on this anniversary of my ordination!  God is truly good in his blessings and in his love poured forth!       

               

The Christmas Pranzo

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Christmas, Community of Sant'Egidio, Pranzo

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Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere

A good meal with friends creates a human space in one’s life that not only nourishes the body but also the soul and spirit of a person.  This is why feasts are so important.  For a special feast we set aside time from the rush of life, we give attention to decoration and setting, we invite those we love and care about and together we sit down for a fine meal and for valuable and rare time to be present to one another.  In the utilitarian rush of our world a feast can even be a subversive action where we conspire in love to say that there is so much more to life than what can be measured and commodified.

For thirty years now the Community of Sant’Egidio has been holding such a feast (the Pranzo) every Christmas day.  Thirty years ago the Community hosted around fifty friends made up of the poor, the elderly and the physically and mentally handicapped for the first Pranzo.  This year it has been determined that the Community hosted over one hundred and fifty thousand people around the world for the Pranzo.  At the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere the pews inside the church were set aside and tables and chairs set up and friends gathered together for the meal.  In New York City a few Christmas dinners took place for the elderly in nursing homes and for the easily forgotten homeless.  In parts of Africa whole villages gathered together for the feast.  In Johnson City, TN the John Sevier Center (a low income housing center) provided the location for the Christmas Pranzo where fifty-five persons were served.
Burkina Faso
It is more than just a meal.  The Pranzo is a time to be human and to know that one is valued and loved and this applies both to those who are served the meal and to those who serve.  The Pranzo is a gathering of friends; friends who have been gathered together by the love of the incarnate Word who came to break down all barriers, to overcome all sad divisions and to gather all peoples into the love of the Father’s Kingdom.  As one homeless man noted while leaving Santa Maria in Trastevere after the feast, “When I think of the Kingdom of God I think of something like this!”
The Pranzo connects Christians once again with the ancient tradition within our Church of feeding the poor specifically on Christmas Day and the Pranzo flows directly from our celebration of the Eucharist.  We all are familiar with the image of the newborn Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (the place where animals are fed).  Christ is indeed the Bread of Life and as we are nourished by this Bread that is Christ himself then we, in turn, are to help in nourishing our world.  This nourishing is more than just the physical, it is also a spiritual nourishing that we are to assist by actions that remind us that yes, we are human, we have dignity and we are meant for more than an isolated existence.  In fact we are meant for relationship and friendship with one another and even with God!  Christ came, we are told, that we might have life and life to the full!  In many ways the Pranzo is a crèche for our modern and distracted world.  It is a continuation of the dream of St. Francis. 
Johnson City, Tennessee
This year I was able to participate in the Pranzo at Primavalle on the periphery of Rome.  (In Rome alone this year there were over one hundred Christmas meals in churches and other locations.)  Primavalle is close to what we in America would term a “senior citizen center”.  The Community of Sant’Egidio runs various activities and prayer at Primavalle which touches and nourishes the lives of the elderly, the handicapped and the poor in the area.  For weeks the community worked and planned the Pranzo.  Gifts were purchased and wrapped, invitations were sent out, decorations were acquired and the multi-coursed meal was prepared.  On Christmas day following the Mass tables and chairs were set up and decorated and over one hundred people gathered together in friendship to celebrate the feast!  At one side of the room sat the image of the infant Christ in the manger; in many ways presiding over the feast! 
Primavalle in Rome
At the end of the meal each of the invited friends received an individual gift.  Afterwards the building was cleaned by many people and all involved were tired but I could not help but be struck by one person who was joyfully and unself-consciously whistling to himself while helping to clean. 
Joy, we are told, is the surest indicator of the presence of God.                

"Let us love one another."

11 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, Community of Sant'Egidio, love

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In my own prayer, reflection and preparation for the Sunday homily I often consult, “The Word of God Everyday”.  This is the daily Scripture reflection book for the Community of Sant’Egidio.  The reflections are written by Bishop Vincenzo Paglia.  Below I have copied in whole his reflection for this coming Sunday, the sixth Sunday of Easter.  I find it to be very good and thought-provoking.  I hope that you do too. 

 “Let us love one another.” This is the imperative that the apostle John never tires from addressing to his community. He knows how important love is in the life of all disciples, because he learned it directly from Jesus and had a concrete experience of his love. He was able to taste Jesus’ sweetness, to see how radical and abundant his love was, as he even loved his enemies, even to the point of giving his own life as a gift. John was a privileged witness of this love, an attentive custodian and a caring preacher. In his first letter, he wants to unveil the nature of Jesus’ love and reveal its source: “Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 Jn 4:7). The apostle speaks here of a love different from the one we normally understand. For us, love is a complex of sentiments that arises spontaneously from the heart, composed of attraction, kindness, desire, passion, self-gratification and satisfaction. To refer to this kind of love, the language of the New Testament employs the Greek word “eros.” The apostle, instead, uses the word “agape” to speak of the love that comes from God and that should govern the relationship between disciples.

To understand God’s love (agape) we cannot begin from our feelings or from our psychology, but from God. The Holy Scripture is the special document for understanding God’s love. It is, in fact, none other than a narrative of the historical event of God’s love for all of humanity. Page after page, in Holy Scripture, we discover a God who does not seem to find rest until he finds repose in the heart of each person. We could paraphrase the well-known sentence that Saint Augustine wrote about man and apply it to the Lord: “Inquietum est cor meum…” (trans. My heart is restless). Davide Maria Turoldo spoke of the “restless heart of God,” which descended to earth to seek out and save that which had been lost, to give life to that which had it no longer. It is a God who becomes a beggar, a beggar for love. In truth, while God extends his hand to ask for love, he gives it to humanity. God is the spirit that descends into the material; the light that penetrates the darkness to give life, to spiritualize, to elevate and to save.

This is Christian love: a God who descends freely into the trenches of the lives of all people to reach out to his beloved. Yes, God is restless until he finds us, until he touches our heart. And God was so restless “that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). God’s love, we could say, “is in descent”, it comes down to reach deep into the lives of all men and women with total devotion, “laying down his life for his friends,” as Jesus himself says. John continues to reflect in his first letter: “In this is love (Christian love), not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). God is the one who loves first, loving even those who are unworthy of his love. God’s love, in essence, is entirely free. It is unjustified. God, in fact, does not love the righteous, but the sinners who are not worthy of being loved. Paul says that God chose the things that do not count for much so that they would count. God chose what was despised in the sight of men so that it would be an object of his grace (1 Cor 1:28). This is the God of the Gospels; a God who is moved by a love that seems attracted particularly by the absence of life and by the negation of love. God is a love that annihilates itself just to reach the most wretched of all people to enrich that person with its friendship. Jesus’ life is held within this very love. God, in fact, is not Being in itself, as understood in Aristotelian thought, but is Being for us, an infinite opening and passionate love for us.

If the entirety of Scripture is the history of God’s love on earth, then the Gospels are its culmination. Therefore, if we want to utter something about God’s love, if we want to give it a face and a name, we can say that love is Jesus. Love is everything that Jesus said, lived, did, loved, suffered… Love is seeking out the sick, it is having friends who are notorious sinners and Samaritans, that is, people who are considered foreigners, enemies and despised. Love is giving one’s life for all; it is remaining alone if needed so as not to betray the Gospel; it is having as a first companion in heaven a man condemned to death, the penitent thief… This is God’s love, which is entirely different from the self-love pounded into our psyche, from the ups and downs of our temperament, of our moods. The bonds of affection between people based on natural attraction are fleeting: it takes little to ruin and destroy them. It is now rare for people to have life-long relationships and difficult to understand relationships as definitive. Self-love, which exists more for personal satisfaction than for the happiness of others, is not strong enough to resist the tempests and problems of life. There are so many victims who fall down the weak and slippery slope of self-love. Only God’’s love is the solid rock that spares us from destruction, because before oneself, there is the other. Jesus gave us an example of this with his own life. He was able to say to his disciples: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (Jn 15:9).

The relationship between the Father and the Son is the model and source of Christian love. Certainly such a love could not come from us alone. We can, however, receive it from God. And, if we receive it, this love generates an abundant, universal fellowship that knows no enemies. It gives rise to a new community of men and women, where God’s love crosses over—even identifies with—the mutual love between people. One, in fact, is the cause of the other. A well-known Russian theologian used to love to say, “Do not allow your soul to forget this saying of the ancient spiritual masters: after God, regard every person as God!” This type of love is the distinctive sign of whoever is born of God. But this love is not a possession that one can acquire once and for all, nor is it the birth right of this or that group. God’s love does not know any limits or borders of any kind. It goes beyond space and time. It shatters every ethnic, cultural and national barrier. It even breaks through the barrier of faith, as one reads in the Acts of the Apostles when the Holy Spirit filled the house of the pagan Cornelius. Agape is eternal; everything passes, even faith and hope, but love remains forever. Not even death can break it for love is stronger than death. Jesus can rightfully conclude, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11).