WE BEGIN

Erika Enlund has begun at Lantern Ministries; they have had water problems for the last several days, and there is major reconstruction going on so conditions are difficult.  She has been a help to Br. Charles with computer programs tracking homeless guests who receive mail at the site and will also be assisting the Director with technology.

Lauren Zanfardino attended orientation programs for her charter school, Langston Hughes, on Friday and Saturday and is becoming familiar with the lingo:  students are ‘scholars’ and instructors and staff ‘dream keepers.’  Lauren, a speech pathology major, will be assisting younger scholars in a reading program.

Travis Wain is waiting for an opening in an agency that will start up a bit later into the autumn.

Br. Bob continues at St. Joe’s on Tulane where Lantern Light Ministries is located; the parishes’ major fundraiser is renting parking slots for football games at the Mercedes Benz Dome where the Saints, our hometown team, play.  It is lucrative; Bob goes to help out on game days and finds the cast of characters and the events that transpire during parking before the games rather unique.

John experienced a four way Skype call on Friday—actually survived would be more appropriate—it worked will and was very helpful. Drat that technology—when it works one has no excuse to avoid it in the future.

A dozen Companions of Pauline, Associates of the Sisters of Christian Charity, held a meeting at the Blessed Pauline Center on Sunday, the 8^th from 1:30 to 4:30 PM.   

The volunteers are making good use of the grille—Travis treated us to steak kabobs on Sunday night—not too rare, not too done—just right.  We continue to negotiate cooking gluten free. 

The peak of our hurricane season is September 10^th, afterwards chances rapidly diminish.  We have had a hot dry spell recently; watering is necessary.  It has been a remarkably calm season.

REFLECTION ON WITNESS:

The Edmund Rice Christian Brothers are preparing for the future by having a series of Province meetings [chapters] and a Congregation wide chapter next year.  Our European Province has already had their chapter.  Following are two excerpts from a homily given by Most. Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin at the European Province Chapter in Dublin, Ireland on August 23, 2013.

“Perhaps for too long you and I have been focusing principally on the first question.  [What do we do?] We like to do things.  We can even come to measure our worth in terms of what we do.   We have tried to prove to ourselves and to others what our convictions mean, through doing things.  Certainly the scriptures tell us that we will be judged on the basis of what we have done, especially for those who are poor or hungry or who are without protection.  But we can also fool ourselves into thinking that because we provide services then we are on the right track, even though our services may indeed be of a quality well below that which we should be providing. 

What is the difference between the way in which we as a Christian community bring services and the way that is offered by the State or by other NGO’s?  Certainly, other organizations can provide better services in a technical sense than we have been providing.  They may well have greater resources to do so.  We have to focus, however, on what is the essentially different contribution that we as believers are called to bring.

As a Religious Chapter, inevitably, you have been looking at the challenge of what you can effectively achieve with your current resources and human capacity and perhaps you have to recognise, painfully, that you may no longer be able to continue particular services.  This is a realistic and valid form of evaluation.   However, a Religious Chapter can never be reduced to just a rational analysis of activities and a revision of what can be achieved in terms of allocation of personnel and funding.

The true analysis and discernment of your Religious Chapter comes from the answer to the second question: “[As a] Christian Brother where do I come from?”   Here it is vital to look at your founder, the contribution that he brought, and the vision that he espoused.  Edmund Rice curiously, like many of the other great inspirers of the religious renewal, which took place in the Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, probably never envisaged the establishment of a religious order in quite the way that it evolved. In this, Edmund Rice was similar to those other great figures of the time like Mary Aikenhead, Catherine McCauley and others.

They had a creative vision of Christian individuals coming together in a loose federation of spirituality and community.  These founders could see, even within the framework of a rule, a strong dimension of evangelical freedom, which would enable the members to respond with creativity to the needs of people and especially the religious needs of young people.”

AND

“You can only be a Christian Brother of today if you follow where you came from, if you follow in the footsteps of Edmund Rice. You must, through the way you live and witness, attract young men and women to the person of Jesus Christ through witnessing what Jesus means to you in your own life.   There is a sense in which the history of the Christian Brothers and of the charism of Edmund Rice will never really be written by professional historians, but by how you live his charism day by day in the different worlds and cultures you may find yourself.

There is no catechetical programme that can replace the authentic witness of someone who really believes in Jesus and shows that faith in Jesus changes the way we live, and brings meaning and hope to our lives, mixed up and sinful though they may be.”