-
Grace in Abundance
-
I was born in 1952 in Northeastern Pennsylvania into a strict Catholic family with a Polish father and a Slovak mother. Mine was a fairly typical Eastern-European working-class, blue-collar upbringing, in a parish of the Diocese of Scranton where everyone seemed to be not too far removed from their immigrant roots. There were fences between our backyards, but no walls. We were all simply neighbors. Many of the households were bi-lingual, or even tri-lingual, which I think embarrassed the heck out of most kids. Besides the various Protestant churches and a few Jewish synagogues in town, there were, within walking distance of our home, Catholic churches for the Italians, Irish, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, and so on.
-
-
-
As a very young boy, I often walked to church with my mother on Sunday evenings for Benediction and, on hot summer evenings, for 9-day mission novenas during which dark-skinned priests with ‘foreign’ accents spoke to us about life in their impoverished countries. Those experiences, plus the magazine Maryknoll which arrived in our mailbox, planted the earliest seeds in my imagination about mission in all of its various meanings.
-
-
-
Food Day - Br. Sixtus, Sr. M. Theodora Ntuli OSB, and a local boy distributing cornmeal, salt, candles & matches to the needy from local villages near the Monastery of Christ the Word in Zimbabwe. Sr. Theo, of the Zulu Tribe, was on retreat from her work at the St. Xavier Boarding Home in Mahlabathini in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.
-
Years later as a monk I was actually sent on missions, most memorably twice to a small monastery of the English Benedictine Congregation in Macheke, Zimbabwe. As I write this, I find myself on yet another important mission, albeit much closer to home, at Portsmouth Abbey, another EBC house.
Only in the context of grace can we face our sin;
only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds;
only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.
(The Way of the Heart, Fr. Henri J. M. Nouwen )
-
-
-
Br. Sixtus & Fungai: taken at the local mill in Macheke, Zimbabwe, grinding maize into cornmeal for distribution to the local needy families
-
The intervening years between boyhood and monkhood found me at Penn State University followed by early work at an arts college in Winston-Salem NC and a stint with the Division of Performing Arts at the Smithsonian Institution. Another move, this time to St. Louis, Missouri, provided me with a much longer stay and an eventual introduction to the EBC community at the Saint Louis Abbey where I was professed in 2006.
-
-
-
It took a long time for me to understand and to follow the call to my vocation, a call that made itself known while I was an altar boy for 10 years, from ages 7 to 17 (I eventually served the priest for those Sunday night Benedictions). With my best friend and neighbor, Billy, I had memorized the Latin Mass responses by rote in those pre-Vatican II days, and later we made the transition to the new vernacular Mass in English.
-
You wonder whether it is good to share your struggles with others, especially with those to whom you are called to minister. You find it hard not to mention your own pains and sorrows to those you are trying to help. You feel that what belongs to the core of your humanity should not be hidden. You want to be a fellow traveler, not a distant guide. But when you fully own your pain and do not expect those to whom you minister to alleviate it, you can speak about it in true freedom. Then sharing your struggle can become a service; then your openness about yourself can offer courage and hope to others.
(Own Your Pain, Fr. Henri J.M. Nouwen)
-
