Bulletin Board with News and Events

Sister Clarita Langenfeld died last weekend at her community’s motherhouse in Milwaukee. She was a School Sister of St. Francis who devoted most of her years in religious life to elementary school education. She was a principal at several Chicago area schools, longest and most recently at Our Lady of Victory in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of the northwest side. “Most recently!” - that is, if you consider 26 years ago as “recently”. Sister Clarita was 108 years old when she died. Let me put that age in perspective. I am 54. Sister Clarita was 54 the day I was born. She was twice as old as I am now. I became acquainted with her during the twelve years I taught at Quigley Seminary North and lived in residence at her parish, Our Lady of Victory. She was still the grade school principal when I got there. In fact, my younger sister Sue was the last teacher Clarita hired. Clarita was 82 when she finished as principal. She remained the Superior of her community in the OLV convent and went to work as sacristan at the Church, a job she continued with grace and charm until she was well over 100. She rode 100 revolutions on a stationary bike every day as she approached the 100 candles. For Sister Clarita’s 100th birthday, film maker Colleen Musker produced a 71-minute biography that premiered after a grand champagne toast at the Copernicus Center. Sister was escorted from her limousine that evening by two parishioner/aldermen, Pat Levar and Tom Allen. The Honorable Alderman Levar had been one of her students. The School Sisters of St. Francis annually invited the OLV priests to the convent – a building in which Clarita slept the very first night it was opened in the 1920s - for a reception after the midday Mass on the New Year’s Day Holy Day. Woe betided the OLV parish priest who excused himself from that party! Clarita delivered the invitations herself; Clarita herself expected us to show up. She and I traded Christmas cards after I moved back to full-time parish work in 1990 and until just two years ago when I noticed that the return address and the note were not in her handwriting. I excused her. She was 105 at that point. When the 21st century began, another former OLV priest pointed out that Sister Clarita and anyone else born in the 1800s and still breathing likely were the only humans in history ever to see three centuries. The year she was born, William McKinley was President of the United States; the Spanish-American War began; the Philippine Islands declared independence from Spain; Caleb Bradhan named his soft drink Pepsi-Cola; John Philip Sousa conducted the Marine Band; also born were Golda Meier, George Gershwin, and C.S. Lewis; Lewis Carroll and Otto von Bismarck died; there were no iPods, no DVDs, no CDs, no cassettes, no TVs, no records, no radios; there were 45 States in the USA – Utah had been admitted two years before; there were no Bears, Bulls, Black Hawks, or White Sox; the Holy Name Cathedral, the Water Tower, and Lake Michigan were here – but almost nothing else remains in our neighborhood. In her 100th year during a phone conversation with Sister Clarita, I told her about a baby born to Tammy. Tammy was a 3rd grader at OLV when Clarita retired. Tammy had become one of my best friends – in high school she answered phones in the rectory; I gave her a place to student-teach; I hired her to teach in my parish school; I ate dinner at her parents’ home each Christmas week; I gave her brother (now a Chicago cop) a summer job; she and I at an annual dinner celebrated our birthdays, a day apart (she was born on the last day I was a teenager); I officiated at her wedding; I baptized both of her daughters. Sister Clarita pretended like she remembered Tammy’s family name. During the phone call, she asked me questions – how do you spell that name? when was the baby born? what’s the girl’s name? is the mom still going to teach? the mom is employed at your parish, right? I accepted most of the questions as an old lady’s conversation. I was stupid. Clarita was taking notes. Within the week, a letter arrived at my parish’s school addressed to Tammy’s baby. Sister Clarita wrote a beautiful letter to baby Amanda telling her how proud the nun was of the child’s mom who decided to continue teaching in a Catholic school, how wonderful her mom was, and how much the Catholic way of life meant to her. Tammy put that letter in a special place. Amanda was born in 1998. Sister Clarita was born in 1898. How many kids have a handwritten, touching letter from a person 100 years older than they are?

All of life is a gift. If you are the age of my dad – 80 – today is a gift. If you were born last week, today is a gift. There is no guarantee on our age. Today is a gift from God. Use this day. Nothing belongs in parentheses. Grace is a gift. We don’t buy it, steal it, earn it, deserve it. God’s loving presence and our transformation in it are our gift. God gives grace to us.

If you live 108 years, or if you live for only another minute, understand. Every breath, heartbeat, step, and eye-blink is a gift. God gave you this minute, this thought. Use it.

God bless Sister Clarita Langenfeld. For 108 years, she taught me the meaning of a familiar prayer. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The GALA is the Cathedral parish’s major fundraiser. It is also a good time. This year the GALA will be held on Friday, November 10 beginning at 6:00pm at the Four Seasons Hotel on Delaware Place. The fun has begun with the selling of the raffle tickets. A limited number of tickets (500) will be sold at $50 each. There are three big cash prizes - $1,000; $2,000; and the big winner, $5,000. An extra “early bird” prize will be raffled off to a lucky soul who already has a ticket by August 1. Get your ticket by next weekend to be eligible for two tickets to the August 25 Friday night preseason football game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field. You may get real lucky and win both the football tickets and the $5,000 – all for a $50 chance. Raffle tickets are on sale at Coffee-in-the-Courtyard and after most weekend Masses on State Street. Don’t wait. Once that 500th ticket gets sold, you won’t have a chance. Thanks to everyone who works on the GALA; and thanks to all who support the Cathedral GALA.

I will be away from the Cathedral for two weeks, spending most of the time with my dad at his home on the northwest side. I will be away from Wednesday, July 26, through Wednesday, August 9. The three priests assigned fulltime to the Cathedral – Father John Boivin, Father Paul Stein, & Father Mike Novick - will make the pastor-like decisions while I’m gone. Be good to them. I will look for you in a couple of weeks.

Fr. Dan Mayall