A friend of the school gone

I am a very poor potential customer for the fast growing social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Given the prospect of a free minute or more, I do not think first to enter the communication stream of the internet, or telephones or even letters and notes. I do actually have a membership with Facebook, but have not ventured on the site for maybe two months. It is not a virtue of mine - friends and family tolerate me to a point. It got the best of me today.

This afternoon I checked the website of my home parish, St. James Cathedral in Seattle, where I was confirmed and received my first holy communion many years ago. It is a very vibrant parish with many activities and programs in education, social service, liturgy, music and the arts. I was stunned to see posted on the site "Funeral Homily for Perry Lorenzo." Perry was an old friend whom I have known for over twenty-five years. He died on December 19th, and his funeral Mass was celebrated on December 30th. Until this afternoon, I did not know he had been sick or that he had succumbed to this illness weeks ago.

We started teaching in Catholic Schools together right out of college. When I left to pursue graduate work at Catholic University, Perry continued teaching at one of the Seattle Catholic High Schools, eventually to become the DIrector of Education for Seattle Opera. Perry was a master teacher, a Catholic intellectual, with a profound appreciation for the arts and humanities, and keenly aware that all of this beauty and goodness derived from its source in the God from whom we move and have our being. His lectures held captive and inspired students and adults alike. I was to call him this week to request a lecture for this year's Madeleine Festival.

Perry was the kind of friend whom you might not see for a year or two, but would pick things right up where they were left from before. A true Seattle native, he was an avid coffee drinker who drank me under the table more than once, forcing me to switch to decaffeinated while he looked on with disdain. I last saw him when the Cathedral Choir travelled to Seattle on tour in April of 2008. After our Cathedral Choir participated in the Sunday Mass at St. James, we had lunch and continued talking through the afternoon right up to the call time for our evening concert. Perry was an enthusiastic supporter of the Choir School, and was very interested to visit and help in any way. He was incredibly impressed by the choristers at both the Mass and Concert we presented in Seattle.

I learned today that Perry was diagnosed with bone cancer only seven months ago. The cancer had already spread to his lungs. From all accounts he fought valiantly, and resigned to either fight on to healing or die as God willed. He was 51, and was at the peak of his career with the Seattle Opera. We shared a great respect for the Catholic intellectual tradition, and a love for the church despite its many flaws and imperfections. I am sure that we at one time discussed what was to evolve into the Choir School's mission statement where students are prepared to "engage the culture with the Catholic intellectual, artistic, moral and religious tradition."

There remains an enormous and growing chasm between religion and intelligence, faith and science. Can one be rigorously and honestly intellectual and still be a person of faith? The Church has at times in its history demonstrated that absolute coexistence of faith with intelligence and reason, and at other times has failed miserably to proclaim the truth, beauty and goodness of God, leaving people with little choice but to abandon Catholicism as a pre-modern opiate of the masses. I have often worried that something I have taught or presented to my students may fail utterly in much the same way. Perry worked tirelessly as an 'evangelizer' of the Catholic intellectual and artistic tradition.

Many of us have faced or are facing difficult health situations. We also struggle with religion, the notion of a saving God, and with faith that might seem to be without any real meaning or substance. Fr. Michael Ryan, the pastor of St. James Cathedral gave this prayer to Perry in the last weeks of his life. It is a prayer by the Jesuit theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

When the signs of age
begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the illness that is to diminish me
or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken to the fact
that I am growing ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces
that have formed me;
in all these dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate
to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself.

Fr. Ryan used this prayer again in the homily at his Funeral Mass, but concluded with these words:

"Perry, dear friend, God has penetrated to the very marrow of your substance and borne you away within Himself. You have passed from the land of reflected beauty into the land of Beauty Itself, into the embrace of Beauty Itself. We would be selfish to want you back. And we will best honor your memory by continuing along our own search for meaning, and by doing as you did: letting all that is beautiful enchant, enthrall, and intoxicate us. And lead us to God."

Second Grade Students begin final journey to Confirmation and the Eucharist

This Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We recall with joy the historic event witnessed by the Gospels of Jesus being baptized by St. John the Baptist in the Jordan river. In the Gospel accounts a voice is heard declaring "This is my beloved Son: hear him," and with this event the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth is launched.

Students in the Cathedral parish and Choir School who are preparing for the Sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist will renew their baptismal promises at the 11:00 AM Sunday Mass. They will gather around the baptismal font, the womb of the Church, to renew the profession of faith made as they were washed and anointed as God's children, being grafted onto the Body of Christ by Baptism.

So the journey begins to the Solemnity of Pentecost, where they will approach the Bishop's hand to be sealed with the image of the Lord and dismissed to the Lord's Table for the first time. Please keep these young people in your prayers.

In Your Kindness

Please remember the Ramirez family, members of the Cathedral parish and school, in your prayers. The grandfather of Fernando, a member of the Cathedral's Spanish Choir, passed away in Estipac, Jalisco this evening. He was the great grandfather to Choir School students Luis (Grade 6), Abbie (Grade 3) and Alan (Kindergarten).

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Great News at the Choir School!

As many of you know, the Choir School is in the midst of a $5.9 million Capital Campaign to restore historic Erbin Hall, the spiritual and academic hub of the two acre campus. Today the school received word that a $100,000 gift was being made to the campaign by the I. J. Wagner Foundation of Salt Lake City. This gift comes on the heel of a $300,000 gift in November from the Smartgo Foundation, and a $500,000 from the ALSAM foundation earlier in the year. All together, the last several months have yielded $1,000,025.00 in gifts and pledges, bringing the campaign total to just over $2.1 Million. There is much work to be done, but we are moving forward! Special thanks to Joanna Wheelton and her staff for their fine work!

I was a stranger and you welcomed me...

We continue our celebration of National Migration Week at the Cathedral Parish and School. This morning at the Choir School, Mr. Aden Batar, the Director of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement for Catholic Community Services of Utah, spoke to the students about the important work he administrates on behalf of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. Himself a refugee from Somalia, Mr. Batar oversees a program that resettles refugees from some of the most desperate situations in the world. With over 14 million refugees worldwide, he spoke to the students about the current work reaching out to refugees from Burma, the Congo, Sudan and other nations. He described the conditions of the refugee camps based on his own experience of two years in a camp in Kenya. Many of the young people from these camps have never known life outside the very difficult living conditions within.

Mr. Batar continued by stating the urgent need for volunteers assisting families with resettlement. He identified a number of manageable projects that adults can engage in to assist with the difficult transition these families encounter. Several of the Choir School classes are considering a project that Mr. Batar will propose.

Consider if you might be able to offer assistance or become involved in this important work of the Church. You can contact Mr. Batar and Catholic Community Services at 801 428 1254.

"This is the day that David prophesied in the psalms, when he said: All the nations that you have brought into being will come and fall down in adoration in your presence, Lord, and glorify your name. Again, the Lord has made known his salvation; in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.

"This came to be fulfilled, as we know, from the time when the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to find Christ.

"Dear friends, you must have the same zeal to be of help to one another; then, in the kingdom of God, to which faith and good works are the way, you will shine as children of light: through out Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen."

St. Leo the Great
Sermon on the Epiphany

The Blog Alive for the New Year

A Blessed and Happy New Year to All! We continue our celebration of the Lord’s Nativity on this ninth day of Christmas. Tomorrow we celebrate the great Solemnity of the Epiphany, and we commence our celebration of National Migration Week 2010 in both the Cathedral Parish and the School. The focus of this year’s week is Migrant and Refugee Children.

In his message for this year’s focus on migrants and refugees, Our Holy Father Pope Benedict penned the following:

This year's theme – “Minor migrants and refugees” – touches an aspect that Christians view with great attention, remembering the warning of Christ who at the Last Judgment will consider as directed to himself everything that has been done or denied “to one of the least of these” (cf. Mt 25:40, 45). And how can one fail to consider migrant and refugee minors as also being among the “least”? As a child, Jesus himself experienced migration for, as the Gospel recounts, in order to flee the threats of Herod, he had to seek refuge in Egypt together with Joseph and Mary (cf. Mt 2:14).

At the Choir School, we will be looking at four regions and/or nations with desperate refugee situations that are in the news today: the Hmong people living in Thailand, the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip, Sri Lanka, and the Darfur region of Sudan. Additionally, the students will respond to Bishop Wester’s request that we contact our legislators in the weeks ahead asking for definitive action on immigration reform in the coming legislative session.

Specifically addressing parishes and other Catholic institutions, Pope Benedict wrote the following:

I now turn in particular to parishes and to the many Catholic associations which, imbued with a spirit of faith and charity, take pains to meet the needs of these brothers and sisters of ours. While I express gratitude for all that is being done with great generosity, I would like to invite all Christians to become aware of the social and pastoral challenges posed by migrant and refugee minors. Jesus' words resound in our hearts: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35), as, likewise, the central commandment he left us: to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind, but together with love of neighbor (cf. Mt 22:37-39).

More to come in the days ahead.