Supalonely by Benee ft. Gus Dapperton

Loved this song from the first time I heard it.....

It's getting some airplay now during these quarantine times--Supalonely.

Pope Francis' message for Easter

I found Pope Francis' message of Easter hope to be comforting during these trying times. We need to be reminded that there is light and hope in the midst of darkness and despair. Pope Francis said that we should 'Be messengers of life in a time of death'. He is, and he can show us the way. Here is the link to the article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-easter-pope-vigil/be-messengers-of-life-in-a-time-of-death-pope-says-on-easter-eve-idUSKCN21T0UK?il=0

It's hard to focus on life when the media are so focused on corona virus deaths. I understand that they need to present the facts, and some news channels are better at it than others, in other words, some are better at not sensationalizing everything. Each of us has an overload button that gets pushed at different times for us all. I watch what I need to watch, and no more. That's about ten to fifteen minutes of news at night. Besides those hospitalized, my heart goes out to all the doctors and nurses and EMT personnel on the front lines. They are and will forever be the heroes of this time. They are truly focused on life, on preserving life, on trying to keep their patients alive. Perhaps even if they keep one patient alive in the midst of all the death around them, that is a victory. They don't give in or give up. And that is perhaps another message for this time: 'It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness'. We can't give up. God never gives us more than we can handle. He has blessed the world with scientists who are united now in a global effort to find a vaccine for this virus. They will find one, and there will be a victory over this virus. And he has also blessed the world with those who have faith, and who pray for the world. We need both science and faith. They are not mutually exclusive.

Some humor in these corona virus times

I love the animal memes that are circulating on FB these days. Here are a couple of them that are hysterical.

Holy Week pastoral letter written by Fr. McShane of Fordham University

Fr. McShane's pastoral letter for Palm Sunday and Holy Week...…..


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Dear Members of the Fordham Community,

Peace of Christ.

Let me begin with an embarrassing confession. How embarrassing? Very embarrassing. At least for a Jesuit. Here goes. I always approach Holy Week with a mixture of eager longing and dread. There. I said it. Eager longing and dread. I know that you will say that that is a very strange combination of feelings, and I would agree. And yet. And yet, it is the awful truth. You will, of course, ask why I feel this way whenever I see Holy Week roaring toward me on the liturgical calendar.

And of course, Holy Week is closely linked by the calendar to Passover, the first night of which is celebrated on Wednesday evening. Thus, this month we have two spring observances of loss and redemption from two Religions of the Book. A symbol of the universality of faith and love.

But back to Holy Week: The truth behind the confession that I just shared with you is this: I know (and I suspect that you know it as well) that Holy Week and the Passion (the narrative that lies at its heart) are filled with shadows and wrenching emotional pivots. You know what I mean. From Palm Sunday to Spy Wednesday to Holy Thursday to Good Friday to Holy Saturday, we face and wrestle with displays of cruelty contending with tenderness, warm friendship answered by bitter betrayal, professions of undying support followed by abandonment, honesty squaring off with intrigue, hope fighting for the upper hand against despair, and love locked in (mortal) combat with deadening cynicism.

And so, I enter Holy Week with my eyes wide open, and with the understanding that once I step over its threshold on Palm Sunday, there is no turning back. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Therefore, I face the emotional and spiritual roller coaster that it promises with that mixture of eager longing and dread that I told you about a few minutes (or sentences) ago. I really do. You may, of course, say that having read what I just shared with you, you understand the “dread” part of my confession and then ask me how I could possibly look forward to the ordeal (and it really is an ordeal) with eager longing. The simple answer is that I can’t help myself. I just can’t. The love that stands at the center of the Passion accounts (and thus drives all of Holy Week) is so commanding, and its ultimate triumph so consoling that I can’t resist it. I simply can’t. (And I suspect that you can’t resist it either. Admit it. If I can come clean, so can you. And while we are about the work of telling the truth to one another, I should also tell you that I also look forward to Holy Week with deep, heartfelt longing because I know that although the Passion is timeless and unchanging, it surprises me every year by revealing more and more about the love that lies at its core. Therefore, to borrow a phrase from Saint Augustine, it is “ever ancient, ever new”; and I thirst for the newness that God has in store for me every year, and especially this year.)

And so, on this Palm Sunday morning, once again I will step across the threshold of Holy Week with eager longing and dread. Normally, I would enter the Week in the company of a great throng of other believers and be buoyed up, consoled, and strengthened by their faith. Normally, I would enter with holy dread holding a bit of the upper hand over eager longing. Normally I would pause before plunging into the Week to ask for the grace to walk with the Lord Jesus with unflinching courage. Normally. But this year and this Holy Week are anything but normal. We will not find ourselves in the company of large throngs. We will enter it and walk through it in a solitary way. We will all of us enter it with more longing than usual. Longing for companionship with the Lord. Longing for comfort. Longing for love. For my part, I must confess that this year I will change the prayer for grace that I normally utter on Palm Sunday morning. This year, I will pray for the grace to feel and know that the Lord is walking with me—and with all of us as we walk through our shared experience of the very real human passion/suffering that we find ourselves wrestling with.

If experience has taught me anything about what will be the highlight of this year’s Holy Week, it is this: that by the end of the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, I will be exhausted. Wrung out. And as I have always done in the moments of exhaustion that follow the Good Friday liturgy and extend into the quiet of Holy Saturday, I will stand, sit, or kneel before the image of the Pieta in the thirteenth Station of the Cross in the University Church. As I do, I will hear over and over in my head the haunting words and music of the Passiontide hymn “O Sacred Head Surrounded.” In this contemplative moment, (after the semi-cinematic sweep of the events of Holy Week has passed) I will gaze at Mary, the Mother of Sorrows. I will look at her face and see there the unfathomable sorrow of a mother suffering the shock of seeing her Son die “out of order,” that is, before her. I will gaze at her hands as she cradles her Son with what one of the Advent prefaces calls “love beyond all telling.” And in that moment, I will (as I always do) see the price and yes, the triumph of the redeeming love of God, who always chooses to walk with His people and share their sufferings. This year, I will also meditate on and make my own these words that come from the Rite of Marriage in the Book of Common Prayer: “Most Gracious God, we give You thanks for Your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.” The cost and triumph of love.

I may be wrong, but I believe (and believe with all my heart) that the Pieta is the image for this year’s Holy Week, a week during which so many of our friends will struggle with and/or die of COVID-19. Therefore, once again I hope that you will not mind if I ask a favor of you. Close your eyes. Then, see in your mind’s eye one of our sisters or brothers who is dying without the comforting presence and warm embrace of his or her family in the moment of fear or dread in which they need them most. Be present to that person. Cradle them with your prayers. Be fervent. Be bold in your prayer. Ask the Mother of Sorrows to join you as a companion in prayer. Let the power of love triumph in that moment of prayer.

Be assured of my prayers for you and all whom you love during this most solemn Week. May it be a week during which the Lord walks with you and reveals ever more fully the depth of His love for you. And for our Jewish families and loved ones celebrating the liberation from Pharaoh’s bondage, I pray that you also are liberated from fear, from illness, and from the loneliness that this pandemic spring has brought to all of us.

Prayers and blessings,
Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

For those who oppose vaccines

Pastoral message of March 29th from the President of Fordham University

This is another pastoral letter I have received from Father McShane, and as promised, I am posting it here, for comfort and inspiration. 

Dear Members of the Fordham Community, Peace of Christ. During my visits to the University Church, I have found myself irresistibly drawn to pray before stained glass windows in the east transept. I can and do stand before it for long periods of time, frequently with tears in my eyes. Understand that I have passed and looked at that window hundreds of times in the course of the twenty-three years that I have been at Fordham. And I have never had a particularly emotional reaction to it. In fact, if the truth were told, I would have to confess that my eyes--dry or otherwise--were never really drawn to it. At all. Of course, if you asked me, I could have told you who was depicted in the window. If you asked me if there was anything else interesting about it, I would probably have told you that the artist who created the window had cleverly inserted a Rembrandt Christ into the background. But I was never drawn to it. I was never drawn into it. Never. I'd walk past it without emotion. But not now. As I said, these days I can't get away from it. It draws me in with great force. And it speaks to me. You might ask what could possibly move me to tears before that window. Good question. Bear with me. The window captures a very innocent moment, the moment at which St. Aloysius Gonzaga received his First Communion from St. Charles Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan (and a great saint in his own right). Innocent enough. But there is a story behind the young man in the window. Aloysius Gonzaga. Gonzaga. If people hear that name these days, they would most probably tell you that it brings to mind the famously successful basketball program at the Jesuit university in Spokane that bears that name. Nothing more. But there is far more to the man in the window than his connection to that perennially strong basketball team from Washington State.   Aloysius was the eldest son of the Marquis of Castiglione. Therefore, to say that he was a child of privilege would be an understatement. A vast understatement. A budding princeling, Aloysius spent his early life among the courtiers of the noble houses of Renaissance Italy (those hotbeds of ambition, corruption, intrigue and power), with a few side trips to the Hapsburg courts of Spain and Austria. Although he was destined to inherit his father's title and live a life of privilege, his head was not turned by what he saw in those settings. Far from it. In fact, he was deeply troubled by the venality and corruption he encountered in them and decided at an early age to enter the newly-founded Society of Jesus. His father was furious. Aloysius stood his ground. He renounced his titles and his inheritance and left behind him the life his father wanted for him. After he entered the Jesuits, he pursued his studies at the Roman College, where St. Robert Bellarmine was his spiritual director. When a plague broke out in Rome, like many of his young Jesuit confreres, he worked in the city's hospitals, ministering to its victims. When his superiors (for fear of incurring his father's wrath) forbade him to continue his work, he pleaded with them to allow him to continue. They relented, but with a catch. They told him that he could only work in a hospital that did not serve contagious patients. He accepted the assignment on the spot. In the course of his service, however, he cared for a patient who had, in fact, been infected with the plague and was himself infected. He died shortly thereafter.   His brethren recognized his holiness. They recognized his heroism. They recognized his goodness. They were also astounded by the magnitude of the sacrifices he had made: giving up the life of a courtier to live a life of simplicity, and giving up his life to serve the suffering. (His old spiritual director, Robert Bellarmine, a saint, a scholar, and a cardinal, was so impressed by Aloysius that he asked to be buried at his feet.) Throughout his life and in the manner of his death, then, Aloysius was a "sign of contradiction" (or a living oxymoron): he was a humble noble. Or was he all the more fascinating because he redefined nobility in terms of service? I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.   For myself, when I go to the University Church these days, I am drawn to St. Al's window. I stand there transfixed. And these words from the Book of Sirach ring in my ears and rumble through my heart: "Let us now praise famous men and women . . . those who gave counsel by their understanding, leaders in their deliberations and learning, wise in their instruction. And ... the men and women of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten. Their posterity will continue forever, and their glory will not be blotted out. People will declare their wisdom and the congregation will proclaim their praise." And then I think immediately of the St. Al's in our midst. I think of the men and women on the front lines in the titanic battle with COVID-19 in which the whole world is caught up. I think of the doctors, nurses, EMS workers and counsellors. I think of the parents who have put their lives on hold to watch over their children. I think of the people who labor to keep the nation and the world running. And I am rendered speechless. Absolutely speechless. I find myself inspired just thinking about them. And grateful. Speechless, inspired and grateful. All at once.   Of course, I suspect that I am not alone. I suspect that, like me, you too recognize their goodness, their heroism, and their holiness. Indeed, I suspect that, like me, you recognize their saintliness. And, I suspect that, like myself, you are ennobled by seeing and knowing them, and deeply grateful that they have, through their work shown us the holy nobility that comes from service, especially service of the poor and the most vulnerable.   And so, my dear friends, I wonder if you would mind if I asked a favor of you: could you look at their faces of these latter-day St. Al's as their stories are told not in the artistry of stained glass, but on the television news reports that we all watch with rapt attention every day. Look at them intently. As you peer into their eyes, pray for them. Pray for them. And, because this would both please them and affirm the nobility of what they are doing, pray also for those whom they are serving so selflessly during this time of trial. Be assured of my prayers for you and all whom you love as I stand before St. Al's window and contemplate the epitaph frequently used to summarize his life and the call that we have all received: Natus ad Altiora, "Born for Higher Things." For we have all been called to Higher Things. Like noble service.   Prayers and blessings,   Joseph M McShane, S.J.

Pastoral messages from the President of Fordham University

As an alumnus of Fordham University (Rose Hill Campus in the Bronx, NY), I receive emails from the President of the university, and recently, started receiving pastoral letters from him to all Fordham alumni. But also to the world at large, because his words help a lot of people. I will be posting Father Joseph McShane's pastoral letters from time to time. I find them to be comforting and inspiring in these coronavirus times. 

A Pastoral Message from Father McShane | Sunday, March 22, 2020

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By Bob Howe on March 22, 2020 University News

Dear Members of the Fordham Community,

Peace of Christ.

On the night of 11 October 1962, the day on which the Second Vatican Council began, a large (and unexpected) group of pilgrims made their way to St. Peter’s Square and gathered under Pope John XXIII’s window. Although he was caught completely by surprise by their appearance, “Good Pope John” opened his window and delivered what is now referred to as his “moonlight address,” a sort-of homily that many think was the most remarkable speech he gave in the course of his historic pontificate.

For reasons that I hope will become clear, I have found myself haunted, consoled and enriched by it as I have prayed my way through the past week. “Haunted, consoled and enriched.” Words to conjure with, to be sure. I certainly conjure with them, and they stir up strong feelings in my heart. I hope that you will find Pope John’s words to be as consoling as I do. I also hope that they will enrich you. Of course, it will take time to see if they haunt you as they have haunted me.

Looking down at the friendly crowd that filled the Square, Pope John said, “Dear sons and daughters, I feel your voices! Mine is just one lone voice, but it sums up the voice of the whole world. And here, in fact, all the world is represented tonight. We ask for a great day of peace. My own person counts for nothing—it’s a brother who speaks to you, but all together, (we) give honor to the impressions of this night, which are always our feelings, which now we express before heaven and earth: faith, hope, love, love of God, all aided along the way in the Lord’s holy peace for the work of the good. And so, let us continue to love each other, to look out for each other along the way: to welcome whoever comes close to us, and set aside whatever difficulty it might bring. When you head home, find your children. Hug and kiss your children. And when you find them with tears to dry, give them a good word. Give anyone who suffers a word of comfort. And then, all together, may we always come alive—whether to sing, to breathe, or to cry, but always full of trust in Christ, who helps us and hears us, let us continue along our path.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m no John XXIII. Far from it. He’s a saint and I’m a deeply flawed guy in a Roman collar. And yet, all week his encounter with the pilgrims under his window has framed my prayer, and his words have become more and more the substance of my prayer (and my charge) for you. Although you have not appeared under my window, you have crowded into my heart. When I close my eyes in prayer, I see you. I see you in the settings in which I have encountered you: in the plaza and elevators at Lincoln Center; on Edwards Parade and along the pathways at Rose Hill; at Convocation and at the Faculty Senate; in the cafeterias on both campuses; in the carpenter’s shop; at games and gatherings; the offices where you labor for us; at dances and awards events; and at Spring Preview and Opening Day. I see your faces. I hear your voices and accents. You crowd in on me from every side. And, as was the case in Saint Peter’s Square so many years ago, you bring the whole world to Fordham. And you fill my heart with pride.

If the truth were told, I miss you. Terribly. Achingly. But this is not about me. It’s about you. I know your goodness and generosity. Therefore, I ask you to put your generosity of heart to good use in a world that is deeply wounded at the moment. Take to heart the words of Good Pope John. No. I take that back. Let your actions be guided, inspired and driven by his words. If you do, you will be God’s missionaries to the world He loves with His whole heart, especially at this very difficult time in the history of the human family: “Continue to love each other, to look out for each other along the way, to welcome whoever comes close…when you go home, hug and kiss your children (and your parents and siblings)…And when you find them with tears to dry, give them a good word. Give anyone who suffers a word of comfort. And then, all together, may we always come alive — whether to sing, to breathe or to cry, but always full of faith in God who helps us and hears us, let us continue along our path.” May you be consoled, enriched, energized and, yes, haunted by this charge.

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, although I miss you, as we enter into a new and challenging phase of our nation’s response to the present crisis, I entrust the worlds in which you live to your care. It matters not if you are a believer or non-believer, may your homes be places of blessing for all of you. May you find solace and joy there. May you be enriched by the memories that have hallowed them over the years. Cherish your families there. May you discover God’s sustaining presence there. And may your encounters with the God of all consolation make you ever more what you are meant to be (and what I have come to know you are): lights shining forth in a world in need of comfort, hope and love.

Prayers and blessings,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.