JESUITICA: Foresight

Is there a special Providence that saves Jesuits from hitting the jackpot? In 1809 the New York Jesuits bought a farm up country in a place called Elgin. The countryside was pretty and the air was good, but they knew the city would never move out that far. When they needed cash to repaint the college on 16th Street, they sold the upcountry farm for $12,000. It is now the site of St Patrick’s Cathedral, which you can see pictured here, sharing the same Manhattan air-space as many skyscrapers.

Forthcoming events

• The Parents’ Council of Gonzaga College are sponsoring a lecture byMichael Paul Gallagher SJ at 7.30 p.m. on 23 April, in the college chapel: “God Missing but not missed- Will the next generation have Faith?” All are welcome.
• Christian Life Community has a Day of Prayer on 6 June 2009 at Emmaus Retreat Centre, Swords, Co. Dublin, from 10am – 4.30pm approx.
• Gerry O’Hanlon SJ is participating in a debate tomorrow night (Wednesday, 22 April), entitled, ‘Faith in a Crisis: Religion and Spirituality in an Economic Downturn’. The debate – styled as a political cabaret incorporating a panel discussion, music and film – will take place in the Button Factory, Temple Bar (Dublin) at 8:00 p.m., on Wednesday, 22 April, 2009. Tickets are €17.50, available from Tickets.ie.

Pilgrim teachers

In the first week of April, Fergus O’Donoghue SJ and Brian Flannery led a group of educators from Jesuit schools through the places in Northern Spain associated with St Ignatius’ early life. There were three teachers from Clongowes and St Declan’s, and two each from Gonzaga, Galway and Belvedere. The group gelled. Their most vivid memories are diverse: the extraordinary sharing sessions at the end of each day; the eerie spirituality of Palm Sunday in Zaragosa with bunched canons turning their backs to the church, and penitents in pointed hats processing to drumbeat; the spectacular impact of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia temple (pictured here) in Barcelona. In the best tradition of returning travellers, their stories and enthusiasm would make anyone envious, and keen to follow those footprints.    124

Liam greets the volunteers

On 18 April Irish Aid organised a Volunteering Information Fair in Dublin. Liam O’Connell SJ represented Jesuit Volunteers International (JVI) and the Mission Office at the event, and he had interesting conversations with 48 of the 400 people who attended. These included past students from Jesuit schools, people who have just taken early retirement, husband and wife teams who want to volunteer, and those making plans for 2010. JVI are specifically looking for people to teach in a Jesuit primary school in Dodoma in Tanzania, starting in July, and people to teach English to adults in a Jesuit language school in Yangon, Myanmar starting in August 2009. For further details consult the JVI website.

Richard’s Easter

This is rare. Richard O’Dwyer SJ describes the impact on him of a ravaged corner of Sudan while the experience is still raw. Richard, formerly a chartered surveyor, is working for the Jesuit Refugee Service in South Sudan, and has just send the account below of Easter Happenings in South Sudan. The inhospitible terrain and the even starker histories of its denizens made a deep impact on Richard, but he was equally overwhelmed by the resilience of the people, the priests and the bishop of the diocese where he works. “I marvelled,” he writes, “at how these joyful, smiling people whose Church, town and whose very lives had been reduced to dust, were able to rejoice so exuberantly. I felt I was witnessing a new beatitude in the making.” Read more »

Hunting for Easter eggs

160 Easter eggs were donated to Jesuit Refugee Service Ireland in response to their appeal. This enabled them to send Easter eggs out to children living in three direct provision centres in the Dublin area. They were also able to use the remaining eggs for the Annual JRS Ireland Easter Egg Hunt. It took place in Mountjoy Square Park on a gorgeous, sunny Easter Sunday afternoon. After a scramble to find the hidden chocolate eggs there was time to enjoy face painting, ‘creme egg and spoon’ races (see picture), kite making, hoola hooping, football and relay races. The fantastic weather brought about 120 people into the park. The day was a great success, thanks in large part to the assistance of many JRS volunteers.

African Immersion Experience III

Michael Sheil SJ has just returned from Lesotho with a group of Clongowes boys, the third group to take on  the African Immersion Experience since it started in 2007. This project is the brainchild of Australian Frank Clarke, Clongowes’ Director of Ethos. And ethos is central to the project. The motivation for the team springs from their faith; they go essentially as servants and students, to listen and learn and help. Belfast-born Michael Sheil, who has worked in Clongowes for years as man and boy, has always given time in the summer to pastoral projects such as handicapped children in Lourdes. It is clear from his African reflections that the Lesotho project hit him hard.

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Fr Provincial in Asia

Mission Office Director John Guiney and Provincial John Dardis (right in photo, Freddie Deignan SJ on left) have just returned from a visit to Irish Jesuits working in Japan, Hong Kong, Cambodia and Singapore. AMDG Express has already featured their meeting with Fr Bill Johnston in Tokyo, and with Belvedere students in Hong Kong. John Dardis looks bandbox fresh and energetic after all those thousands of flying miles, and has plunged into a series of visitations this week, but he found time to share his impressions below. He notes in particular the vibrancy of the work being done by Jesuits throughout the continent, and the great hospitality which they extended to their brothers from Ireland.

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Unmissable: BBC on Caravaggio

Last November, AMDG Update reported the activity of a TV crew in Leeson Street preparing a documentary on the house’s Caravaggio painting, The Taking of Christ, which was a major art find in the early 1990s. The programme, entitled ‘Private life of an Easter masterpiece’, appeared on BBC 2 on Holy Saturday, and it deserved every superlative in the book. It told a gripping story with an art that concealed deep scholarship, looking at both the planning and execution of the painting, and the extraordinary ups and downs of its subsequent history, from Cardinal Mattei’s generous payment of the artist in 1602 to its disposal at a minor auction in Edinburgh for eight guineas in 1921 – when it was described not as a Caravaggio but “after Honthorst”.

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Spreading the good news

Media-wise it was a fruitful Lent and Easter for Jesuits and their colleagues. Gerry O’Hanlon SJ entered the fray of the economic downturn, discussing his book ‘God and the Recession’ on TV3, BBC’s Sunday Sequence, and RTE TV’s Nationwide. Indeed, the same Nationwide’s ten-minute package broadcast on Spy Wednesday featured young people from various Jesuit works living out a faith that does justice with the homeless and those in prison (Slí Eile), migrants (Jesuit Refugee Service and Clongowes students) and the Jesuit University Support Trust in Ballymun. See it here: click on ‘Youthful Faith’. It was watched by over 400,000 viewers - an amazing 30.6% audience share – and stirred real Easter hope in the hearts of many viewers. Read more »

Short Notices

• Sacred Space welcomes Richard McCarthy (pictured here), a Tralee man married to a Brazilian, who has joined Piaras Jackson SJ and Patrick Muldoon as the team’s web developer, after experience of website work in finance and in business settings in Dublin.
• Gonzaga’s rugby footballers notched up a real achievement by reaching the Junior B league final for the first time in the school’s history, only to be beaten by Blackrock College.
• Fr. Richard O’Donovan OMI, the brother of Fr. Jack Donovan SJ, has compiled a book of Jack’s life.  In Loving Memory traces Jack’s 77 years – from brith in Co Galway in 1931 to his requiem Mass at St. Margaret’s Church in Canning Town last October – and contains a generous selection of photographs and tributes, not least from the Filipino community to whom Jack ministered.
• OCIPE, the Conference of European Provincials, has prepared a  memorandum in view of the forthcoming European elections. It focuses briefly on certain themes that deserve voters’ particular attention. You can view the document as a PDF here.