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Bishop deGoësbriand’s apostolic heart

Posted on by Father Lance Harlow

Two years after his arrival as founding bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, Bishop Louis deGoësbriand headed back to Europe on a recruitment mission to secure more priests for Vermont. He needed priests that spoke French and priests that spoke English.

On May 15, 1855, while he was staying in Paris, Bishop deGoësbriand wrote to the rector of All Hallows College in Dublin, Ireland. All Hallows was a seminary devoted to forming priests as missionaries for English-speaking countries like the United States. It was founded in 1840 by Father John Hand who was concerned about Irish immigrants leaving Ireland and their having adequate access to English-speaking priests in foreign lands.

Bishop deGoësbriand wrote the following:

Very Rev. Dear Sir:

                        I am just arriving [in France] from Rome where I spent four weeks. I thank God for giving me that grace for I envy those who live there. Whilst at Rome, I had the great honor of attending Pius IX at the low Mass which according to custom he said in his private chapel on Holy Thursday.  Another memorable souvenir of Rome is that of the great audience of the 12th of April when I fell with the Pope, the Archbishop of Dublin and a great many others. [Note: the floor actually collapsed. Fortunately everybody survived]. I should love Rome, though these events should not have taken place but you see I am now bound to think of the Eternal City. …

            On my way to Paris, I stopped at Lyons in great part to recommend my diocese to the Propagation of the Faith. …         

            Before I started for Rome, I had every reason to believe that I had secured a sufficient number of missionaries for my new Mission of Vermont, but as I arrived I found that the most have backed out. … I then wish Rev. MM Lynch and O’Reilly to finish their theological course in peace. Tell them if you please that I was praying hard for them over the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, that I have asked and obtained for them an especial benediction from the Holy Father.  God grant we may all have the spirit of the first Apostles! Let me know what they will want.  Have they succeeded in obtaining more laborers for Vermont?

                                                            Yours very truly,

                                                            +Louis deGoësbriand

                                                            Bp. of Burlington

Bishop deGoësbriand’s heart burned with the fervor of the apostles. His priestly life for 13 years had been that of a missionary. One notices the disappointment in his tone that the once-willing seminarians had changed their minds about coming to Vermont as missionaries. Undaunted however, the bishop continued recruiting priests from Ireland, France and Canada to build up his presbyterate.

Disappointment is normal for an apostle who burns with love for the Gospel when others don’t share that same zeal, but God always blesses those who trust in Him. Over the succeeding decades, God would bless Bishop deGoësbriand’s apostolic heart with a fruitful ministry in ways he could never have foreseen.

—Father Lance Harlow is pastor of Corpus Christi Parish based in St. Johnsbury.

—Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

Look to God with childlike wonder, pope says

Posted on by Catholic News Service

Only by shedding feelings of personal greatness and regaining a sense of wonder in God’s love can people welcome Jesus into their hearts and lives, Pope Francis said.

With some 15,000 visitors gathered to pray the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square July 9, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew in which Jesus praises God the Father for hiding “things” from the wise and revealing them to the childlike.

Those things, Pope Francis explained, refer to Jesus’ miracles — restoring sight to the blind and healing lepers — which are “signs of God acting in the world” that are overlooked by the prideful.

God’s love, as reflected through Jesus’ miracles, “is not understood by those who presume to be great and manufacture a god in their own image: powerful, unyielding, vengeful,” he said.

“These presumptuous ones fail to accept God as Father; those who are full of themselves, proud, concerned only with their own interests: these are the presumptuous ones, convinced that they need no one,” Pope Francis said.

The childlike who are open to receiving God’s love, however, “have hearts free from conceit and self-love,” the pope explained.

“The childlike are those who, like children, feel needy and not self-sufficient; they are open to God and let themselves be astonished by his works,” he said. “They know how to read his signs, amazed by the miracles of his love.”

Pope Francis urged Christians to ask themselves whether they let themselves stop and be amazed by how the signs of God are working in their lives or if they notice them only in passing.

“Our lives, if we think about it, are full of miracles, full of signs of love, of signs of God’s bounty,” he said. “Before these, however, our heart can also remain indifferent and become set in its ways, strangely unable to be amazed.”

Pope Francis suggested that Christians draw attention to the signs of God’s love in daily life in by “photographing” them in their minds and “printing” them onto their heart to then develop them in their lives through positive actions, so that the “photograph” of God’s love “becomes brighter in us and through us.”

After praying the Angelus the pope recalled “with pain” the recent bloodshed in the Holy Land, where on July 3 Israeli forces launched a two-day ground and aerial attack on the city of Jenin in the West Bank. The Palestinian government reported that 12 Palestinians were killed in the raid and at least 120 were wounded.

“I hope that the Israeli and Palestinian Authorities can resume a direct dialogue in order to end the spiral of violence and open paths of reconciliation and peace,” the pope said.

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Feeding the mind and soul

Posted on by Sharon Trani

Our faith teaches that body and soul cannot be separated. They are both good. Our bodies and minds point us to and help us to understand the physical and emotional and spiritual intimacy we are made for. And feeding our souls deeply enriches those intimacies and connections. Feeding on God, His Word, and the Eucharist helps us to see the incredible love we are made for and called to. If we ignore or neglect our body, it negatively impacts the soul; if we ignore the soul, our body suffers. As a therapist, I admire those who recognize their mind or soul is starving and go about learning how to heal and feed these integral parts of themselves.

If our soul or mind or body is left unattended, it affects everything. As a nurse practitioner, I have spent my life encouraging people to eat well, make healthy choices, be moderate. Eating fast food, refined foods, junk food will cause inflammation in our bodies, decrease our immune response, put us at risk for cancer and heart disease. We also know that our physical bodies need movement and exercise, stretching and toning to keep “the machine” well-oiled and running smoothly.

Not giving good physical fuel to our bodies can negatively impact our spiritual and emotional wellbeing. Studies show that physical exercise boosts the brain chemicals that improve our mood.

In the same manner, if we feed on all that is going wrong in our world, listen to a constant negative spin, forget to be grateful, our mind and spirit will be depressed, dull, irritable and our body and soul will likewise be dull and listless.

If we starve our soul or feed it superficial junk, we will feel disconnected from the transcendent, lose sight of the fact that we are made for love and connection. God invites us to come to Him, to sit with Him, to let Him love and feed us. The peace that He gives us is a powerful antidote to the unsettling world around us. We know that spiritual perspective and peace in turn make for stronger and healthier mind and body.

We are to cherish ourselves, care for ourselves, on every level. We know that we owe our children more than food and a roof over their head; they need security, hugs, understanding, listening; if we are really wise, we realize that they need an overarching framework for their world, on where they came from, why they are here, where are they going. We owe this integrated care for ourselves as well. When we withhold feeding our soul, it shrivels. And our bodies and minds suffer.

We usually try to feed our physical bodies several times a day, and our souls deserve that kind of daily attention as well. When we feed on the Eucharist, read Scripture, talk to our Lord, inform ourselves about Him and His love and plan for us, we flourish on every level. The healthiest and happiest people are those who evaluate and take care of their body, mind, and soul and integrate them.

—Sharon Trani, a nurse practitioner, is a marriage and family therapist with Vermont Catholic Charities Inc.

—Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Vermont Catholic magazine.

 

Pope institutes commission to share the stories of new martyrs

Posted on by Catholic News Service

The Vatican will establish a new commission to identify and catalogue Christians who have died for their faith in the last 25 years, Pope Francis said.

Looking to the Holy Year 2025, the pope instituted the “Commission of New Martyrs” within the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to “create a catalogue of all those who have shed their blood to confess Christ and witness the Gospel,” he wrote in a letter announcing the commission’s establishment and published by the Vatican July 5.

The pope said the commission will continue research that began ahead of Holy Year 2000 to “individuate the witnesses of the faith in this first quarter century and to continue in the future.”

Martyrs have accompanied the church through every age, he wrote in the letter signed July 3, noting that martyrs “are more numerous in our time than in the first centuries.”

“They are bishops, priests, consecrated persons, laypeople and families that in different countries of the world, with the gift of their lives, have offered the supreme test of charity,” he wrote.

The pope said that the initiative does not seek to establish new criteria for canonically determining the requirements of martyrdom, but “to continue the initiated survey of those who, to this day, continue to be killed simply because they are Christians.”

“It is a matter of continuing the historical investigation to collect the testimonies of life, up to the shedding of blood, of these our sisters and brothers, so that their memory stands out as a treasure cherished by the Christian community,” Pope Francis wrote.

The commission’s research into martyrs will not be limited within the Catholic Church but will extend to all Christian confessions, he said.

Even today “Christians continue to show, in contexts of high risk, the vitality of the baptism that brings us together,” the pope wrote. “Indeed, it is not a few that, even aware of the risks they run, show their faith or participate in the Sunday Eucharist.”

The pope recalled that during the Jubilee year 2000 an ecumenical celebration was held at the Colosseum in Rome that gathered representatives of different churches to evoke what he called an “ecumenism of blood.” He said a similar event will take place in the upcoming Jubilee year.

The Vatican announced July 5 that the commission will be led by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Its vice-president will be Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio.

Its 10 members include Jesuit Father Arturo Sosa, superior general of the Jesuits; Sister Nadia Coppa, president of the International Union of Superiors General; political scientists and church historians.

Pope Francis said that the work of the commission will allow the testimonies of new martyrs “to be placed alongside the martyrs officially recognized by the church.”

“The martyrs of the church are the witnesses of the hope that derives from faith in Christ and incites true charity,” he wrote in his letter. “We owe a great debt to them and we cannot forget them.”

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Christopher Graves is fixing the graves

Posted on by Ellen Kane

Christopher and Delana Braves of Richmond recently established two funds in the Vermont Catholic Community Foundation to honor the legacy of their parents and grandparents.

“My parents taught us from a young age that you never step on a grave and you always respect those that passed before you,” said Delana. “They taught us to talk about them and remember their names as that might be the only time anyone does. And we are carrying on their legacy.”

Last year, the Braveses established the Edward A. and Ann M. O’Neill Mobbs Memorial Holy Rosary Cemetery and St. Mary Cemetery Reserve Fund presently located within the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Parish in Richmond, Vermont. The primary purpose of the fund is to fix broken and overturned headstones.

“My parents had a special mission to care for the cemetery where their relatives were buried,” said Delana Braves. “Caring for the dead is one of the Catholic Corporal Works of Mercy.”

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “the bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in hope and faith of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.”

Edward A. and Ann M. O’Neill Mobbs were married at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Richmond and had three children. Both grew up in Vermont.  Ann O’Neil grew up in Richmond and was a registered nurse working at the former Bishop DeGoesbriand Hospital and the Veterans Hospital in White River Junction.  Her father was a farmer and owned a large farm on Cochran Road which she and her siblings fondly referred to as the “Big Farm.” Edward was born in Essex Junction. He was a full-time employee of the Vermont National Guard, retiring as a Command Sergeant Major from the 186th FSB, 50th DISCOM Unit in 1989. Edward began his ministry to care for both Holy Rosary and St. Mary cemetery when he noticed a broken headstone of one of his relatives. They lived in the same house in Richmond for 53 years where they raised their family.

“These cemeteries were established in the 1800s and need a lot of repairs,” said Chris Braves. Like his father-in-law, Chris started his ministry repairing headstones when he noticed one that had fallen over on his morning run. “Every morning I run down Cochran Road and say the rosary.  On one run, I noticed Delana’s great, great grandfather’s stone had fallen over.”

A few years ago, Chris Braves rebuilt his garage to include a workshop above it where he spends many hours repairing headstones.

Chris grew up in Rutland with many family ties to the community, especially Mount Saint Joseph School where his grandmother attended as well as her siblings. His grandmothers on both sides of the family played a significant role in his life, especially in his faith.

This past Fall, Chris and Delana established the Thomas F. and Florence E. Chapleau Dunn Family & Christos D. and Catherine T. Lines Braves Family Memorial Mount St. Joseph Academy Fund presently located at 127 Convent Ave, Rutland in honor of his family to support operations of the school.

As an educator and coach, working with children his entire life, Chris wanted to do something that honored his family and his faith.

Mount St. Joseph Academy (formerly St. Peter’s School) was one of the first six Catholic schools established in our diocese in 1882 under our first bishop, Louis DeGoesbriand.

“Today, because of people like the Braves, we can continue our mission to educate the whole person in mind, body and spirit and remain accessible to all who desire a challenging Catholic educational experience,” said Principal Michael Alexander, MSJ.

The Vermont Catholic Community Foundation was established more than seven years ago as a way for the faithful to leave a legacy of faith for the next generation and to honor those who came before us. Most funds are endowed and intended to provide stable income annually to a specific ministry in perpetuity.  This is vital for the future operation of our schools, parishes, and cemeteries. The Christ Our Hope Legacy Society was established a few years ago to acknowledge those who have left a bequest to a diocesan ministry. This is a beautiful way to leave a legacy of faith for the next generation and has an impact no matter the size.

To learn more about how the foundation, how to establish a fund or join the legacy society visit: vtcatholicfoundation.org or contact Ellen Kane, ekane@vermontcatholic.org.

 

Vatican offers indulgence for visiting elderly, celebrating grandparents’ day

Posted on by Catholic News Service

Catholics who celebrate the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly July 23 can receive a plenary indulgence, which is a remission of the temporal punishment due for one’s sins, the Vatican said.

In a decree issued July 5, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, said that a plenary indulgence will be extended “to grandparents, the elderly and all the faithful who, motivated by the true spirit of penitence and charity,” attend Mass or other services to celebrate the world day and that the indulgence can “also be applied as suffrage for the souls in purgatory.”

The decree states that the indulgence will also apply to “the faithful who dedicate adequate time to visit in person or virtually, through means of communication, elderly brothers and sisters in need or in difficulty” such as the sick, abandoned and disabled on July 23.

The indulgence also is available to the elderly who are ill and “unable to leave their homes for serious reasons” but who nonetheless “will unite spiritually with the sacred services of the world day, offering to the merciful God their prayers, pains and sufferings of their lives,” granted they satisfy the requirements for the indulgence

To receive a plenary indulgence, a person must show detachment from sin, go to confession, receive the Eucharist and pray for the intentions of the pope.

Pope Francis celebrated the first World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021 and decreed that it be observed each year on the Sunday closest to the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, Jesus’ grandparents. The theme for this year’s world day is “His mercy is from age to age,” from St. Luke’s Gospel.

Cardinal Piacenza asked priests to make themselves available to hear confessions with a “ready and generous spirit.”

— By Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service