New Passionist Deacon

Fr John Auram (left) with other young Passionists at the Young Passionists Meeting before the World Youth Day in 2008

Congratulations to Father John Auram C.P. who was ordained to the Diaconate today at Saint Paul the Apostle Parish, Endeavour Hills, Melbourne. Father John, who is from Papua New Guinea, is a member of the Province of the Holy Spirit.

Twenty Nine Years Ago Today

I was ordained on the Vigil of Saints Peter and Paul 1980 in Saint Mungo’s Church, Glasgow, by Bishop Charles McDonald Renfrew. I am amazed to see that Bishop Renfrew, who seemed so much older and wiser, was actually four years younger then than I am now. Congratulations also to my classmates Patrick, Thomas, Martin and Patrick, and John who will celebrate his ordination anniversary tomorrow, and may Hugh enjoy his anniversary in heaven.

Saints John and Paul

Even if you are on your way to the Lateran you won’t grudge the twenty minutes it will take you, on leaving the Colosseum, to turn away under the Arch of Constantine .. toward the piazzetta of the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, on the slope of Caelian. No spot in Rome can show a cluster of more charming accidents. The ancient brick apse of the church peeps down into the trees of the little wooded walk before the neighbouring church of San Gregorio, intensely venerable beneath its excessive modernisation; and a series of heavy brick buttresses, flying across to an opposite wall, overarches the short, steep, paved passage which leads into the small square. This is flanked on one side by the long mediaeval portico of the church of the two saints, sustained by eight time-blackened columns of granite and marble. On another rise the great scarce-windowed walls of a Passionist convent, and on the third the portals of a grand villa, whose tall porter, with his cockade and silver-topped staff, standing sublime behind his grating, seems a kind of mundane St. Peter, I suppose, to the beggars who sit at the church door or lie in the sun along the farther slope which leads to the gate of the convent. The place always seem to me the perfection of an out-of-the-way corner – a place you would think twice before telling people about, lest you should find them there the next time you were to go. It is such a group of objects, singly and in their happy combination, as one must come to Rome to find at one’s house door; but what makes it peculiarly a picture is the beautiful dark red campanile of the church, which stands embedded in the mass of the convent. It begins, as so many things in Rome begin, with a stout foundation of antique travertine, and rises high, in delicately quaint mediaeval brickwork – little tiers and apertures sustained on miniature columns and adorned with small cracked slabs of green and yellow marble, inserted almost at random. When there are three of four brown-breasted contadini sleeping in the sun before the convent doors, and a departing monk leading his shadow down over them, I think you will not find anything in Rome more sketchable.
(Henry James, Italian Hours)

Tomorrow, 26 June, is the Feast of Saints John and Paul, early Christian martyrs whose names are included in the Roman Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer). The Basilica of Saints John and Paul is the church of the Passionist generalate in Rome. The Summer and Fall 2001 issue of Compassion magazine was devoted to the Basilica of Saints John and Paul. Also interesting is a letter written by Father Marius from the Monastery of Saints John and Paul in which he describes how it looked when he visited about ten years ago and when he lived there as a student over fifty years ago. For pictures of the Basilica, both old and recent, have a look at Vedute di Roma.

MSM Blog

I have recently added a link to a new blog called Journey of a Young Priest to the sidebar, in the section for Sites of Passionist Interest. The author is a member of the Mission Society of Mandeville, Jamaica. This young missionary institute, founded under the guidance of Bishop Paul M. Boyle, first Bishop of Mandeville, has expressed a desire to deepen its links with the Passionist Congregation.
Here is a prayer to Saint Paul of the Cross which I found on Father Michael’s new blog:
Dear Saint Paul of the Cross
Teach me to obey your words:
to meditate on and follow the Passion of our Lord
to be constant in practicing every virtue
to live in such a way that I may bear
the image of Christ Crucified
both outwardly and inwardly
to conceal myself in Jesus Crucified,
to hope for nothing
except that all peoples may
be converted to His will.
Amen !

Cor Jesu

When you were scourged, what were the sentiments of your Sacred Heart?
Saint Paul of the Cross, Diary, 1720

Changes at passiochristi.org

Passio Christi, the website of the Passionist Generalate, has recently changed its layout. The address of its English-language version has also been changed; the new address is for information in English is www.passiochristi.org/EN/EN.htm. At the same time, www.passiochristi.org, which used to be a portal offering links to the different languages (including Italian) has now become the Italian version of the site: an interesting change for an international congregation working in sixty countries, only one of which speaks Italian!

Corpus Christi

We had our Corpus Christi procession last Sunday. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to take photographs during the procession, as I was carrying the Monstrance, but here are some from the barbecue afterwards.

Smoke gets in your eyes

All that fresh air gives you an appetite.

The adults waited until the children had been fed.

Mother and daughter doing teamwork.

Anyone for more?

You will have noticed the big dish of salad in the fourth photograph; that’s to distract the health police from all the burgers and sausages. The First Communicants enjoyed wearing their outfits again and managed to keep the ketchup off their white clothes.

Diary of a Country Priest

Six months ago yesterday I arrived at Saint Gabriel’s, Prestonpans, as parish priest. Since then, this blog has been woefully neglected, with only six posts in as many months; in fact, I haven’t even been posting the comments I have received (-my apologies for that). Inevitably, settling in has taken some time. I was more than twelve years in the Saint Mungo’s community, and this is my first experience of living alone. The life of a solitary priest in an almost-country parish is certainly not stressful, but it is constant. However, having got through the first six months, I do intend to try to find some time for Laus Crucis in the future.

In Pace: Father Damian Wojtyska C.P.

Yesterday, Father Damian Wojtyska died in Poland. I knew him as a holy, prayerful man with very strong convictions. My only visit to Poland was at his invitation to give a talk to the members of the Polish Province when he was Provincial. Here’s a summary of his life’s work from Polish Wikipredia and other sources:

Father Damian Wojtyska, historian, theologian, priest, Passionist, died yesterday at Lodz, Poland. He was 75 years old.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated on 26 March at 9.00 a.m. in the Passionist Church in Lodz (Aleja Pasjonistów 23), and burial on the same day at 1.00 p.m. at the Passionist Church in Rawa Mazowiecka.

Henryk Damian Wojtyska was born on 13 May 1933 near Regiminie Ciechanów. He entered the Passionist Congregation in 1950 and was ordained a priest in 1957. In the years 1958 to 1962, he studied church history at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. His doctoral thesis was on the work of Cardinal Hosius, Legate to the Council of Trent (published in 1967).

In 1969 he became a researcher and lecturer at the Catholic University of Lublin. He obtained his Habilitation (post-doctoral degree) in 1975 on Diplomatic Relations between Poland and the Papacy 1548-1563 (published in 1977), and was appointed the first Professor of the History of Theology at the Catholic University of Lublin, a post he held from 1976 to 1998. Between 1981 and 1983 he was the University’s Vice-Rector for Youth. In the difficult period of martial law, he was accustomed to visiting students who were in custody and accompanying them to court. He organized active assistance for those who need it. For this reason, he enjoyed great respect and the confidence of young people.
From 1985 to 2004, he was a member of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences in the Vatican. In the years 1985-94, he was Vice-President of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome. During these years, he began editing the series Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae, the first ten volumes of which appeared between 1990 and 1994, under his direction. He is the author of the first volume in the series (Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae. T. 1: De fontibus eorumque investigatione et editionibus. Instructio ad editionem. Nuntiorum series chronologica. Rome 1991). He also published studies in the same series on individual nuncios.
A member of the Scientific Society of Lublin and the Scientific Society of the Catholic University of Lublin, the Accademia di San Carlo (Borromeo) and the Reformation Commission of the Historical Committee of the Polska Akademia Nauk. Until 2004, he was a Consultor of the Doctrine of the Faith Commission (Historical Section) for the Polish episcopate.

He was Provincial of the Polish Passionist Province from 1994 to1998. In the years 2006-07, he published a monumental work on the history of the Passionist Congregation in Poland (volume 1 – Prehistory and Foundational Period to 1938, Lodz 2006; volume 2 – War and Occupation 1939-1945, Przasnysz 2007). He also published a book on the Polish Passionist Martyrs of World War II (Przasnysz 2008).

After a long and severe illness, Father Damian died in the Passionist monastery in Lodz, Poland, on 24 March 2009.

Message for World Youth Day 2009

Pope Benedict’s Message for this year’s World Youth Day (celebrated on Palm Sunday) is on the theme of Christian Hope. The Pope says that a text from Saint Paul’s letter to Timothy We have set our hope on the living God (1 Tim 4:10) is the key text for this year’s preparation for the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid, while next year we will reflect on the question put to Jesus by the rich young man: Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? (Mk 10:17). In his message, published today, the Pope relates the theme of hope to the questions young people have to struggle with in life:
Youth is a special time of hope because it looks to the future with a whole range of expectations. When we are young we cherish ideals, dreams and plans. Youth is the time when decisive choices concerning the rest of our lives come to fruition. Perhaps this is why it is the time of life when fundamental questions assert themselves strongly: Why am I here on earth? What is the meaning of life? What will my life be like? And again: How can I attain happiness? Why is there suffering, illness and death? What lies beyond death? These are questions that become insistent when we are faced with obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable: difficulties with studies, unemployment, family arguments, crises in friendships or in building good loving relationships, illness or disability, lack of adequate resources as a result of the present widespread economic and social crisis. We then ask ourselves: where can I obtain and how can I keep alive the flame of hope burning in my heart?

Pope Benedict speaks of his compassion and concern for those young people who are caught in tragic situations and encourages young Catholics to be evangelisers of youth, bringing the message of hope to those who seem lost in hopelessness:
My dear young friends, I have in mind so many of your contemporaries who have been wounded by life. They often suffer from personal immaturity caused by dysfunctional family situations, by permissive and libertarian elements in their education, and by difficult and traumatic experience. For some – unfortunately a significant number – the almost unavoidable way out involves an alienating escape into dangerous and violent behaviour, dependence on drugs and alcohol, and many other such traps for the unwary. Yet, even for those who find themselves in difficult situations, having been led astray by bad role models, the desire for true love and authentic happiness is not extinguished. But how can we speak of this hope to those young people? We know that it is in God alone that a human person finds true fulfilment. The main task for us all is that of a new evangelization aimed at helping younger generations to rediscover the true face of God, who is Love. To you young people, who are in search of a firm hope, I address the very words that Saint Paul wrote to the persecuted Christians in Rome at that time: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:13). During this Jubilee Year dedicated to the Apostle of the Gentiles on the occasion of the two thousandth anniversary of his birth, let us learn from him how to become credible witnesses of Christian hope.

The Holy Father offers Saint Paul the Apostle as a model and inspiration of Christian Hope and he concludes his message by invoking the intercession of Our Lady, using a title dear to Passionists – Mary, Mother of Hope:
Following in the footsteps of the people of hope – composed of prophets and saints of every age – we continue to advance towards the fulfilment of the Kingdom, and on this spiritual path we are accompanied by the Virgin Mary, Mother of Hope. She who incarnated the hope of Israel, who gave the world its Saviour, and who remained at the foot of the Cross with steadfast hope, is our model and our support. Most of all, Mary intercedes for us and leads us through the darkness of our trials to the radiant dawn of an encounter with the Risen Christ.