|
|
 |
|
| Can we have |
|
| your support? |
Helping Hands in Saint Louis: a Blog by Colleen
Coughlin
Hi everyone! Welcome to my first blog for Hand of Help. I am so excited
to be involved with such a great organization full of amazing people, who mentor young adults in mission and service day-in
and day-out. Mission is right up my alley, so I am looking forward to sharing
with you. I hope that I can offer some new perspectives on mission from right
here in my hometown – the fabulous “Gateway to the West” – Saint Louis, Missouri.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
An Ocean of Peace and St. Anthony
Greetings and peace dear friends! A blessed Janurary. Icy winter blasts are visitng many of
you. For others in Arizona and Calfornia both sun and rain are making their presence felt. In places like New
Zealand and Australia summer is in full bloom. In the midst of this we are linked by God's racial love and care. A
wise Indian mystic Paramabansa Yogananda writes of contact with God: "your whole body changes when you pratice meditation
frequently, because when you really contact God, all things become harmonious; all things melt into an ocean of peace." May
we all enter into God's abundant peace.
On Janurary 17 the Church celebrates the feast of St. Anthony of Egypt born
in 250 AD. just a little over 200 years after the death of Christ. St. Anthony found God calling him. In fact
as an early account of his life notes: "six months after his parents death on the way to church he began to think of the apostles
who had left everything and followed the Savior....Anthony reflected too on the great hope stored up in heaven for such as
these. This was all in his mind when entering the church just as the Gospel was being read, he heard the Lord's words
to the rich young man: 'If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor-you will have riches
in heaven. Then come and follow me.'"
Young Anthony is profoundly moved by these words and the Spirit alive in his
heart. Felling that God is bringing these words to him directly the account continues: "Immediately he left the church
and gave away to the villagers all the property he had inherited...He sold all his other possessions as well, giving to the
poor...." The Spirit is now is in Anthony's blood and he goes again to the church. Once again very alive in the
Spirit he hears: "Do not be anxious about tomorrow." Anthony becomes the father of monastic religious life called by
God to live in the desert and begin a whole way of life we are still seeking to live 18 centuries later. In fact Anthony
lives well into his 90's blessed and loved. No better description can be said of him that does his biographer St. Athanasius:
"Seeing the kind of life he lived, the villagers and the good men and women he knew called Anthony the friend of god, and
they loved him as both son and brother."
Friends God is still calling all of us to life in the Spirit in unique and
glorious ways. The Lord has plans for you and I beyond our wildest dreams. The Spirit constanyly prompts you and
I to let go. A young minister in the south in the 1950's heard the call of the Spirit and found that "I have a dream."
With that Dr. Martin Luther King's life was never the same. This week in private prayer, liturgy, business, family
and social activities may we allow this same Spirit that called Anthony into Life here and Life eternal to call you
and I into lives of love flowing over in ourselves, others and the world around us. May St. Anthony founder of the monastic
life and model for St. Benedict be our guide into now and into eternity.
Friends we love and pray for all of you. Please
pray for us. We invite you to take a look at our Hand of Help web site at www.handofhelp.info and the Holy Trinity web
site at www.holytrinitymonastery.org. The Hand of Help web site thanks to the good work of our web master Victor Valdez
is posting new pictures and information weekly and monthly. May St. Anthony bless our efforts. In St. Anthony
and St. Benedict, Fred Buerman ob.OSB, Mary McCarthy ob.OSB, Father Henri Capdeville OSB and the community of Hand of Help
at Holy Trinity Monastery.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Killer Wave known as Tsunami
Greetings, peace and Happy New Year of 2005. Friends this email is a few days late because while in
Christ it is both a happy day and happy new year the deadly killer wave known as Tsunami is touching all of our lives.
I wanted to pray, reflect and take some time to share with you. The unspeakable tragedy coming out of the Indian Ocean
is an event I reflect on with fear and trembling. My faith takes me to the book of Job with the ancient question of:
"Why do bad things happen to good people? " This question I am hearing asked over and over again in churches, schools, marketplaces,
banks, families in essence a question pondered by everyone human. Job in the Book of Job is a good man who loses
everything. Taunted by his friends and wife that he must have sinned to deserve this divine punishment Job refuses to
curse God and die. Job however begs God for inisght. He questions and begs on a dunghill covered with sores and
alone. God comes out of the midst and dialogues with Job.
The God of the Book of Job takes Job on to a cosmic
stage where God is God powerful and creating: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?....Who pent up the sea
behind closed doors when it leapt tumultuous from the womb, and made black clouds its swaddling bands; when I cut out the
place I had decreed for it and imposed gates and a bolt?" The sea for ancient people is a symbol of choas that God must
tame. As the book goes on Job further acknowleges God as Lord and Master of the forces of both good and evil.
Yet all through the book there is a great dynamic tension about the question of bad things happening to good people in fact
all people.
Friends daily CCN, news and famous people like former Presidents Clinton and Bush seek to help. In
all I hear I also hear a theology in the best sense of the word: "Faith seeking understanding." In preparing to write
these words I am praying the Office of the Dead for all those killed in the killer wave and their families and friends.
The morning prayer of the Office of the Dead contains the cry of Isaiah from the Canticle: 38:10-14,17-20:
My
dwelling like a shepherd's tent, is struck down and borne away from me; you have folded up my life like a weaver who severs
the last thread.
Day and night you give me over to torment; I cry out to the dawn. Like a lion he breaks all
my bones; day and night you give me over to torment.
Like a swallow I utter shrill cries, I moan like a dove.
My eyes grow weak, gazing heaven-ward: O Lord, I am in straits; be my surety!
Friends the canticle goes on to end with
hope in God as Lord just as in the Book of Job. Yet with the death of 180,000 people in the matter of a few hours we
are all invtied to reflect, do theology (faith seeking understanding) in the depths of our hearts. I invite all of us
to take time for prayer and reflection this week. We invite you to share some of your reflections with all of us.
We all need and hunger for peace, for God, for insights to life.
Hope for me lies in the daily response of good people
to those still alive and in need. A world wide response is taking place. For me God is in each helping hand, each
dose of medicine each person taking care of a child lost, sick and orphaned and in all those sick, hungry and in despair.
Hope for me is also in everyone taken away from this life because at the core of my being I believe that life is not taken
away only changed. Hope also lies in the truth that as nations and people we must collaborate as a community with all
the teachology at our disposal for warning systems and other checks and balances. Yet these are small flickers in a
very bleak time. Friends I end this email in the ancient cry: Lord Jesus Christ Son of the Living God have mercy on
me.
We look forward to being in touch and hearing form all of you. Know that we love you and are in this
together in Christ: Yesterday, today, now and forever. In the words of Job the man of God: "The Lord gave and the Lord
takes away blessed be the name of the Lord."
Blessed New Year of 2005 from Brother Fred Buerman ob.OSB, Mary McCarthy
ob.OSB, Father Henri Capdeville OSB, Prior and the Community of Hand of Help at Holy Trinity Monastery.
|
|
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Enter supporting content here
You are Visitor number
|
|
|
|
